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American ^tatejsmen 



EDITED BY 



JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 



American £tate£men 



THOMAS HART BENTON 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1891 



• 8+IT77 



Copyright, 1886, 
St THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



«A# n^fas reserved. 
?y TxawrftI 



M/iP ? jt^* 



FIFTH EDITION. 



The Riverside Prrss, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Company^. 



CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER I. 

PAGB 

The Young West 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Benton's Early Life and Entry into the Senate 23 

CHAPTER HI. 
3^tjlY Tears in the Senate 47 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Election of Jackson, and the Spoils System 69 

CHAPTER V. 
The Struggle with the Nullifiers . . .88 

CHAPTER VI. 
and Benton make War on the Bank . 114 
CHAPTER VII. 
The Distribution of the Surplus .... 143 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Slave Question appears in Politics . .157 




a&0£ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

The Children's Teeth are set on Edge . . 184 



CHAPTER X. 
Last Days of the Jacksonian Democracy . . 209 

CHAPTER XL 
The President without a Party .... 237 

CHAPTER XII. 
Boundary Troubles with England .... 260 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Abolitionists Dance to the Slave Barons' 
Piping , . 290 

* . <*% 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Slavery in the New Territories .... 317 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Losing Fight 341 






THOMAS HAET BENTON. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE YOUNG WEST. 

Even before the end of the Revolutionary 
War the movement had begun which was to 
change in form a straggling chain of sea-board 
republics into a mighty continental nation, the 
great bulk of whose people would live to the 
westward of the Appalachian Mountains. The 
hardy and restless backwoodsmen, dwelling 
along the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies, 
were already crossing the mountain-crests and 
hewing their way into the vast, sombre forests 
of the Mississippi basin ; and for the first time 
English-speaking communities were growing 
up along waters whose outlet was into the Gulf 
of Mexico and not into the Atlantic Ocean. 
Among these communities Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee were the earliest to form themselves 
into states; and around them, as a nucleus, 
other states of the woodland and the prairie 
were rapidly developed, until, by the close of 
the second decade in the present century, the 



2 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

region between the Great Lakes and the Gulf 
was almost solidly filled in, and finally, in 1820, 
by the admission of Missouri, the Union held 
within its borders a political body whose whole 
territory lay to the west of the Mississippi. 

All the men who founded these states were 
of much the same type ; they were rough fron- 
tiersmen, of strong will and adventurous tem- 
per, accustomed to the hard, barren, and yet 
strangely fascinating life of those who dwell as 
pioneers in the wilderness. Moreover, they 
were nearly all of the same blood. The people 
of New York and New England were as yet fill- 
ing out their own territory ; it was not till many 
years afterwards that their stock became the 
predominant one in the northwestern country. 
Most of the men who founded the new states 
north of the Ohio came originally from the old 
states south of the Potomac; Virginia and North 
Carolina were the first of the original thirteen 
to thrust forth their children in masses, that 
they might shift for themselves in the then un- 
trodden West 

But though these early Western pioneers were 
for the most part of Southern stock, they were 
by no means of the same stamp as the men who 
then and thereafter formed the ruling caste in 
the old slave-holding states. They were the 
mountaineers, the men of the foot - hills and 



THE YOUNG WEST. 3 

uplands, who lived in what were called the 
backwater counties. Many of them were them- 
selves of northern origin. In striking contrast 
to the somewhat sluggish and peaceful elements 
going to make up the rest of its heterogeneous 
population, Pennsylvania also originally held 
within its boundaries many members of that 
most fiery and restless race, the Scotch-Irish. 
These naturally drew towards the wilder, west- 
ern parts of the state, settling along the slopes 
of the numerous inland mountain ridges run- 
ning parallel to the Atlantic coast ; and from 
thence they drifted southward through the long 
valleys, until they met and mingled with their 
kinsfolk of Virginia and the Carolinas, when 
the movement again trended towards the West. 
In a generation or two, all, whether their fore- 
fathers were English, Scotch, Irish, or, as was 
often the case, German and Huguenot, were 
welded into one people ; and in a very short 
time the stern and hard surroundings of their 
life had hammered this people into a peculiar 
and characteristically American type, which to 
this day remains almost unchanged. In their 
old haunts we still see the same tall, gaunt men, 
with strongly marked faces and saturnine, reso- 
lute eyes ; men who may pass half their days 
in listless idleness, but who are also able to show 
on occasion the fiercest intensity of purpose and 



4 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the most sustained energy of action. We see 
them, moreover, in many places, even across to 
the Pacific coast and down to the Rio Grande. 
For after thronging through the gaps and passes 
of the Appalachians, and penetrating the forest 
region to the outskirts of the treeless country 
beyond, the whilom mountaineers and woods- 
men, the wielders of the axe and rifle, then 
streamed off far to the West and South and 
even to the Northwest, their lumbering, white- 
topped wagons being, even to the present mo- 
ment, a familiar sight to those who travel over 
the prairies and the great plains ; while it is 
their descendants who, in the saddle instead of 
afoot, and with rope and revolver instead of 
axe and rifle, now form the bulk of the reckless 
horsemen who spend their lives in guarding the 
wandering cattle herds that graze over the vast, 
arid plains of the " Far West." 

The method of settlement of these states of 
the Mississippi valley had nothing whatever in 
common with the way in which California and 
the Australian colonies were suddenly filled up 
by the promiscuous overflow of a civilized popu- 
lation, which had practically no fear of any 
resistance from the stunted and scanty native 
races. It was far more closely akin to the tribe 
movements of the Germanic peoples in time 
past ; to that movement, for example, by which 



THE YOUNG WEST. 5 

the Juttish and Low Dutch sea- thieves on the 
coast of Britain worked their way inland at the 
cost of the Cymric Celts. The early settlers of 
the territory lying immediately west of the Al- 
leghanies were all of the same kind ; they were 
in search of homes, not of riches, and their ac- 
tions were planned accordingly, except in so far 
as they were influenced by mere restless love of 
adventure and excitement. Individuals and sin- 
gle families, of course, often started off by them- 
selves ; but for the most part the men moved in 
bands, with their wives and their children, their 
cattle and their few household goods ; each set- 
tler being from the necessity of the case also a 
fighter, ready, and often forced, to do desperate 
battle in defense of himself and his family. 
Where such a band or little party settled, there 
would gradually grow up a village or small 
town ; for instance, where those renowned pio- 
neers and heroes of the backwoods, Boone and 
Harrod, first formed permanent settlements af- 
ter they had moved into Kentucky, now stand 
the towns of Boonsboro and Harrodsburg. 

The country whither these settlers went was 
not one into which timid men would willingly 
venture, and the founders of the West were per- 
force men of stern stuff, who from the very 
beginning formed a most warlike race. It is 
impossible to understand aright the social and 



6 THOMAS HART DENTON. 

political life of the section, unless we keep 
prominently before our minds that it derived 
its distinguishing traits largely from the ex- 
tremely militant character acquired by all the 
early settlers during the long drawn out war- 
fare in which the first two generations were 
engaged. The land was already held by power- 
ful Indian tribes and confederacies, who waged 
war after war, of the most ferocious and bloody 
character, against the men of the border, in 
the effort to avert their inevitable doom, or at 
least to stem for the time being the invasion 
of the swelling tide of white settlement. At 
the present time, when an Indian uprising is 
a matter chiefly of annoyance, and dangerous 
only to scattered, outlying settlers, it is difficult 
to realize the formidable nature of the savage 
Indian wars waged at the end of the last and 
the beginning of the present centuries. The 
red nations were then really redoubtable ene- 
mies, able to send into the field thousands of 
well-armed warriors, whose ferocious bravery 
and skill rendered them quite as formidable 
antagonists as trained European soldiers would 
have been. Warfare with them did not affect 
merely outlying farms or hamlets ; it meant 
a complete stoppage of the white movement 
westward, and great and imminent danger 
even to the large communities already in ex- 






TH* 



THE YOUNG WEST. 1 

istence ; a state of things which would have 
to continue until the armies raised among the 
pioneers were able, in fair shock of battle, to 
shatter the strength of their red foes. The vic- 
tories of Wayne and Harrison were conditions 
precedent to the opening of the Ohio valley; 
Kentucky was won by a hundred nameless and 
bloody fights, whose heroes, like Shelby and 
Sevier, afterwards rose to prominent rank in 
civil life ; and it was only after a hard-fought 
campaign and slaughtering victories that the 
Tennesseeans were able to break the power of 
the great Creek confederacy, which was thrust 
in between them and what were at that time 
the French and Spanish lands lying to the 
south and southwest. 

The founders of our Western States were 
valiant warriors as well as hardy pioneers, and 
from the very first their fighting was not con- 
fined to uncivilized foes. It was they who at 
King's Mountain slew gallant Ferguson, and 
completely destroyed his little army ; it was 
from their ranks that most of Morgan's men 
were recruited, when that grizzled old bush- 
fighter smote Tarleton so roughly at the bat- 
tle of the Cowpens. These two blows crippled 
Cornwallis, and were among the chief causes of 
his final overthrow. At last, during the War 
of 1812, there was played out the final act in 



8 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the military drama of which the West had been 
the stage during the lifetime of a generation. 
For this war had a twofold aspect : on the 
sea-board it was regarded as a contest for the 
rights of our sailors and as a revolt against 
Great Britain's domineering insolence ; west of 
the mountains, on the other hand, it was sim- 
ply a renewal on a large scale of the Indian 
struggles, all the red-skinned peoples joining 
together in a great and last effort to keep the 
lands which were being wrested from them ; 
and there Great Britain's part was chiefly that 
of ally to the savages, helping them with her 
gold and with her well-drilled mercenary troops. 
The battle of the Thames is memorable rather 
because of the defeat and death of Tecumseh, 
than because of the flight of Proctor and the 
capture of his British regulars ; and for the 
opening of the Southwest the ferocious fight at 
the Horseshoe Bend was almost as important as 
the far more famous conflict of New Orleans. 

The War of 1812 brought out conspicuously 
the solidarity of interest in the West. The 
people there were then all pretty much of the 
same blood ; and they made common cause 
against outsiders in the military field exactly as 
afterwards they for some time acted together 
politically. Further eastward, on the Niagara 
frontier, the fighting was done by the troops of 



THE YOUNG WEST. 9 

New York and New England, unassisted by the 
Southern States; and in turn the latter had 
to shift for themselves when Washington was 
burned and Baltimore menaced. It was far 
otherwise in the regions lying beyond the 
Appalachians. Throughout all the fighting in 
the Northwest, where Ohio was the state most 
menaced, the troops of Kentucky formed the 
bulk of the American army, and it was the 
charge of their mounted riflemen which at a 
blow won the battle of the Thames. Again, 
on that famous January morning, when it 
seemed as if the fair Creole city was already in 
Packenham's grasp, it was the wild soldiery of 
Tennessee who, lolling behind their mud breast- 
works, peered out through the lifting fog at 
the scarlet array of the English veterans, as the 
latter, fresh from their long and unbroken se- 
ries of victories over the best troops of Europe, 
advanced, for the first time, to meet defeat. 

This solidarity of interest and feeling on the 
part of the trans-Appalachian communities is a 
factor often not taken into account in relating 
the political history of the early part of this 
century; most modern writers (who keep for- 
getting that the question 01 slavery was then 
not one tenth as absorbing as it afterwards be- 
became) apparently deeming that the line of 
demarkation between North and South was at 



10 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

that period, as it has since in reality become, 
as strongly defined west of the mountains as 
east of them. That such was not the case was 
due to several different causes. The first com- 
ers into Tennessee and Kentucky belonged to 
the class of so-called poor whites, who owned 
few or no slaves, and who were far less section- 
ally southern in their feelings than were the 
rich planters of the low, alluvial plains towards 
the coast of the Atlantic ; and though a slave- 
owning population quickly followed the first 
pioneers, yet the latter had imprinted a stamp 
on the character of the two states which was 
never wholly effaced, — as witness the tens of 
thousands of soldiers which both, even the more 
southern of the two, furnished to the Union 
army in the Civil War. 

If this immigration made Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, and afterwards Missouri, less distinct- 
ively Southern in character than the South 
Atlantic States, it at the same time, by furnish- 
ing the first and for some time the most numer- 
ous element in the population of the states 
north of the Ohio, made the latter less charac- 
teristically Northern than was the case with 
those lying east of them. Up to 1810 Indiana 
kept petitioning Congress to allow slavery 
within her borders ; Illinois, in the early days, 
felt as hostile towards Massachusetts as did 



THE YOUNG WEST. 11 

Missouri. Moreover, at first the Southern 
States west of the mountains greatly outweighed 
the Northern, both in numbers and importance. 
Thus several things came about. In the first 
place, all the communities across the Allegha- 
nies originally felt themselves to be closely knit 
together by ties of blood, sentiment, and inter- 
est; they felt that they were, taking them 
altogether, Western as opposed to Eastern. In 
the next place, they were at first Southern 
rather than Northern in their feeling. But, in 
the third place, they were by no means so ex- 
tremely Southern as were the Southern Atlantic 
States. This was the way in which they looked 
at themselves ; and this was the way in which 
at that time others looked at them. In our 
day Kentucky is regarded politically as being 
simply an integral portion of the solid South ; 
but the greatest of her sons, Clay, was known 
to his own generation, not as a Southern states- 
man, but as " Harry of the West." Of the two 
presidents, Harrison and Taylor, whom the 
Whigs elected, one lived in Ohio and one in 
Louisiana ; but both were chosen simply as 
Western men, and, as a matter of fact, both 
were born in Virginia. Andrew Jackson's vic- 
tory over Adams was in some slight sense a 
triumph of the South over the North, but it 
was far more a triumph of the West over the 



12 TnOMAS HART BENTON. 

East. Webster's famous sneer at old Zachary 
Taylor was aimed at him as a "frontier 
colonel;" in other words, though Taylor had 
a large plantation in Louisiana, Webster, and 
many others besides, looked upon him as the 
champion of the rough democracy of the West 
rather than as the representative of the polished 
slave-holders of the South. 

Thus, during the first part of this century, the 
term " Western" was as applicable to the states 
lying south of the Ohio as to those lying north 
of it. Moreover, at first the Central, or, as they 
were more usually termed, the Border States, 
were more populous and influential than were 
those on either side of them, and so largely 
shaped the general tone of Western feeling. 
While the voters in these states, whether Whigs 
or Democrats, accepted as their leaders men 
like Clay in Kentucky, Benton in Missouri, and 
Andrew Jackson in Tennessee, it could be 
taken for granted that on the whole they felt 
for the South against the North, but much 
more for the West against the East, and most 
strongly of all for the Union as against any 
section whatsoever. Many influences came 
together to start and keep alive this feeling; 
but one, more potent than all the others com- 
bined, was working steadily, and with ever- 
increasing power, against it ; and when slavery 



THE YOUNG WEST. 13 

finally brought about a break between the 
Northern and Southern States of the West as 
complete as that in the East, then the Demo- 
crats of the stamp of Jackson and Benton dis- 
appeared as completely from public life as did 
the Whigs of the stamp of Clay. 

Benton's long political career can never be 
thoroughly understood unless it is kept in mind 
that he was primarily a Western and not a 
Southern statesman; and it owes its especial 
interest to the fact that during its continuance 
the West first rose to power, acting as a unit, 
and to the further fact that it was brought to a 
close by the same causes which soon afterwards 
broke up the West exactly as the East was al- 
ready broken. Benton was not one of the few 
statesmen who have left the indelible marks of 
their own individuality upon our history ; but 
he was, perhaps, the most typical representative 
of the statesmanship of the Middle West at the 
time when the latter gave the tone to the polit- 
ical thought of the entire Mississippi valley. 
The political school which he represented came 
to its fullest development in the so-called Border 
States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 
and swayed the destinies of the West so long as 
the states to the north as well as the states to 
the south were content to accept the leadership 
of those that lay between them. B came to an 



14 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

end and disappeared from sight when people 
north of the Ohio at last set up their own 
standard, and when, after some hesitation, the 
Border States threw in their lot with the other 
side and concluded to follow the Southern com- 
munities, which they had hitherto led. Benton 
was one of those public men who formulate and 
express, rather than shape, the thought of the 
people who stand behind them and whom they 
represent. A man of strong intellect and keen 
energy, he was for many years the foremost 
representative of at least one phase of that 
thought ; being, also, a man of high principle 
and determined courage, when a younger gener- 
ation had grown up and the bent of the thought 
had changed, he declined to change with it, 
bravely accepting political defeat as the alter- 
native, and going down without flinching a 
hair's breadth from the ground on which he 
had always stood. 

To understand his public actions as well as 
his political ideas and principles it is, of course, 
necessary to know at least a little of the men 
among whom he lived and from whom he sprang : 
the men who were the first of our people to 
press out beyond the limits of the thirteen old 
states ; who filled Kentucky, Tenness*ee, Arkan- 
sas, and Missouri, and who for so long a time 
were the dominant class all through the West, 



THE YOUNG WEST. 15 

until, at last, the flood of Northeastern immi- 
gration completely swamped their influence 
north of the Ohio, while along the Gulf coast 
the political control slipped from their hands 
into the grasp of the great planter class. 

The wood -choppers, game - hunters, and In- 
dian-fighters, who first came over the moun- 
tains, were only the forerunners of the more 
regular settlers who followed them ; but these 
last had much the same attributes as their 
predecessors. For many years after the set- 
tlements were firmly rooted, the life of the 
settlers was still subject to all the perils of 
the wilderness. Above all, the constant war- 
fare in which they were engaged for nearly 
thirty-five years, and which culminated in the 
battle of New Orleans, left a deep and lasting 
imprint on their character. Their incessant 
wars were waged almost wholly by the settlers 
themselves, with comparatively little help from 
the federal government, and with hardly any 
regular troops as allies. A backwoods levy, 
whether raised to meet an Indian inroad or to 
march against the disciplined armies of the 
British, was merely a force of volunteers, made 
up from among the full-grown male settlers, 
who were induced to join either from motives of 
patriotism, or from love of adventure, or because 
they felt that their homes and belongings were 



16 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

in danger from which they could only extricate 
them by their own prowess. Every settler thus 
became more or less of a soldier, was always 
expert with the rifle, and was taught to rely 
upon his own skill and courage for his protec- 
tion. But the military service in which he was 
from time to time engaged was of such a law- 
less kind, and was carried on with such utter 
absence of discipline, that it did not accustom 
him in the least to habits of self-command, or 
render him inclined to brook the exercise of 
authority by an outsider ; so that the Western 
people grew up with warlike traditions and 
habits of thought, accustomed to give free rein 
to their passions, and to take into their own 
hands the avenging of real or supposed wrongs, 
but without any of the love for order and for 
acting in concert with their fellows which char- 
acterize those who have seen service in regular 
armies. On the contrary, the chief effect of 
this long- continued and harassing Border war- 
fare was to make more marked the sullen and 
almost defiant self-reliance of the pioneer, and 
to develop his peculiarly American spirit of in- 
dividual self-sufficiency, his impatience of out- 
side interference or control, to a degree not 
known elsewhere, even on this continent. It 
also gave a distinct military cast to his way of 
looking at territory which did not belong to 



THE YOUNG WEST. 17 

him. He stood where he was because he was a 
conqueror; he had wrested his land by force 
from its rightful Indian lords ; he fully intended 
to repeat the same feat as soon as he should 
reach the Spanish lands lying to the west and 
southwest ; he would have done so in the case 
of French Louisiana if it had not been that the 
latter was purchased, and was thus saved from 
being taken by force of arms. This belligerent, 
or, more properly speaking, piratical way of 
looking at neighboring territory, was very char- 
acteristic of the West, and was at the root of 
the doctrine of "manifest destiny." 

All the early settlers, and most of those who 
came after them, were poor, living narrow lives 
fraught with great hardship, and varying be- 
tween toil and half-aimless roving ; even when 
the conditions of their life became easier it 
was some time before the influence of their 
old existence ceased to make itself felt in their 
way of looking at things. The first pioneers 
were, it is true, soon followed by great slave- 
owners ; and by degrees there grew up a clan of 
large landed proprietors and stock-raisers, akin 
to the planter caste which was so all-powerful 
along the coast; but it was never relatively 
either so large or so influential as the latter, 
and was not separated from the rest of the 
white population by anything like so wide a 



18 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

gap as that which, in the Southern Atlantic and 
Gulf States, marked the difference between the 
rich growers of cotton, rice, and sugar, and the 
squalid " poor whites " or " crackers." 

The people of the Border States were thus 
mainly composed of small land -owners, scat- 
tered throughout the country ; they tilled their 
small farms for themselves, were hewers of 
their own wood, and drawers of their own 
water, and for generations remained accustomed 
to and skillful in the use of the rifle. The pio- 
neers of the Middle West were not dwellers in 
towns ; they kept to the open country, where 
each man could shift for himself without help 
or hindrance from his neighbors, scorning the 
irksome restraints and the lack of individual 
freedom of city life. They built but few cities 
of any size ; the only two really important ones 
of whose inhabitants they formed any consider- 
able part, St. Louis and New Orleans, were 
both founded by the French long before our 
people came across the mountains into the Mis- 
sissippi valley. Their life was essentially a 
country life, alike for the rich and for the bulk 
of the population. The few raw frontier towns 
and squalid, straggling villages were neither 
seats of superior culture nor yet centres for the 
distribution of educated thought, as in the 
North. Large tracts of land remained always 



THE YOUNG WEST. 19 

populated by a class of backwoodsmen differ- 
ing but little from the first comers. Such, was 
the district from which grand, simple old Davy 
Crockett went to Washington as a Whig con- 
gressman ; and perhaps there was never a 
quainter figure in our national legislature than 
that of the grim old rifleman, who shares with 
Daniel Boone the honor of standing foremost 
in the list of our mighty hunters. Crockett 
and his kind had little in common with the 
men who ruled supreme in the politics of most 
of the Southern States ; and even at this day 
many of their descendants in the wooded 
mountain land are Republicans; for when the 
Middle States had lost the control of the West, 
and when those who had hitherto followed such 
leaders as Jackson, Clay, and Benton, drifted 
with the tide that set so strongly to the South, 
it was only the men of the type of dogged, 
stubborn old Crockett who dared to make head 
against it. But, indeed, one of the character- 
istics of the people with whom we are dealing 
was the slowness and suspicion with which they 
received a new idea, and the tenacity with which 
they clung to one that they had at last adopted. 
They were above all a people of strong, vi- 
rile character, certain to make their weight 
felt either for good or for evil. They had 
many virtues which can fairly be called great, 



20 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

and their faults were equally strongly marked. 
They were not a thrifty people, nor one given 
to long-sustained, drudging work ; there were 
not then, nor are there now, to be found in this 
land such comfortable, prosperous homes and 
farms as those which dot all the country where 
dwell the men of Northeastern stock. They 
were not, as a rule, even ordinarily well edu- 
cated ; the public school formed no such im- 
portant feature in their life as it did in the life 
of their fellow - citizens farther north. They 
had narrow, bitter prejudices and dislikes ; the 
hard and dangerous lives they bad led had run 
their character into a stern and almost forbid- 
ding mould. They valued personal prowess 
very highly, and respected no man who did not 
possess the strongest capacity for self-help, and 
who could not shift for himself in any danger. 
They felt an intense, although perhaps ignorant, 
pride in and love for their country, and looked 
upon all the lands hemming in the United 
States as territory which they or their children 
should some day inherit ; for they were a race 
of masterful spirit, and accustomed to regard 
with easy tolerance any but the most flagrant 
violations of law. They prized highly such 
qualities as courage, loyalty, truth, and patriot- 
ism, but they were, as a whole, poor, and not 
over-scrupulous of the rights of others, nor jet 



THE YOUNG WEST. 21 

with the nicest sense of money obligations ; so 
that the history of their state legislation affect- 
ing the rights of debtor and creditor, whether 
public or private, in hard times, is not pleasant 
reading for an American who is proud of his 
country. Their passions, once roused, were in- 
tense, and if they really wished anything they 
worked for it with indomitable persistency. 
There was little that was soft or outwardly 
attractive in their character: it was stern, rude, 
and hard, like the lives they led ; but it was the 
character of those who were every inch men, 
and who were Americans through to the very 
heart's core. 

In their private lives their lawless and arro- 
gant freedom and lack of self-restraint produced 
much gross licentiousness and barbarous cru- 
elty ; and every little frontier community could 
tell its story of animal savagery as regards the 
home relations of certain of its members. Yet 
in spite of this they,' as a whole, felt the family 
ties strongly, and in the main had quite a high 
standard of private morality. Many of them, 
at any rate, were, according to their lights, 
deeply and sincerely religious ; though even 
their religion showed their strong, coarse- 
fibred, narrow natures. Episcopalianism was 
the creed of the rich slave-owner, who dwelt 
along the sea-board; but the Western settlers 
belonged to some one or other of the divisions 



22 T nO MAS HART BENTON. 

of the great Methodist and Baptist churches. 
They were as savagely in earnest about this 
as about everything else; meekness, mildness, 
broad liberality, and gentle tolerance of differ- 
ence in religious views were not virtues they 
appreciated. They were always ready to do 
battle for their faith, and, indeed, had to do it, 
as it was quite a common amusement for the 
wilder and more lawless members of the com- 
munity to try to break up by force the great 
camp -meetings, which formed so conspicuous 
a feature in the social and religious life of the 
country. For even irreligion took the form of 
active rebellion against God, rather than dis- 
belief in his existence. 

Physically they were, and are, especially in 
Kentucky, the finest members of our race ; an 
examination of the statistics relating to the 
volunteers in the Civil War shows that the na- 
tives of no other state, and the men from no 
foreign country whatsoever, came up to them 
in bodily development. 

Such a people, in choosing men to represent 
them in the national councils, would naturally 
pay small heed to refined, graceful, and culti- 
vated statesmanship ; their allegiance would be 
given to men of abounding vitality, of rugged 
intellect, and of indomitable will. No better 
or more characteristic possessor of these attri- 
butes could be imagined than Thomas Benton. 



CHAPTER II. 

benton's early life and entry into the 

SENATE. 

Thomas Hart Benton was born on March 
14, 1782, near Hillsborough, in Orange County, 
North Carolina, — the same state that fifteen 
years before, almost to a day, had seen the 
birth of the great political chief whose most 
prominent supporter he in after life became. 
Benton, however, came of good colonial stock; 
and his early surroundings were not character- 
ized by the squalid poverty that marked Jack- 
son's, though the difference in the social con- 
dition of the two families was of small conse- 
quence on the frontier, where caste was, and 
is, almost unknown, and social equality is not 
a mere figure of speech — particularly it was not 
so at that time in the Southwest, where there 
were no servants, except black slaves, and 
where even what in the North would be called 
"hired help" was almost an unknown quan- 
tity. 

Benton's father, who was a lawyer in good 
standing at the North Carolina bar, died when 



24 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the boy was very young, leaving him to be 
brought up by his Virginian mother. She was 
a woman of force, and, for her time, of much 
education. She herself began the training of 
her son's mind, studying with him history and 
biography, while he also, of course, had access 
to his father's law library. The home in which 
he was brought up was, for that time and for 
that part of the country, straightlaced ; his 
mother, though a Virginian, had many traits 
which belonged rather to the descendants of 
the Puritans, and possessed both their strength 
of character and their austerely religious spirit. 
Although living in a roistering age, among a 
class peculiarly given to all the coarser kinds 
of pleasure, and especially to drink and every 
form of gambling, she nevertheless preserved 
the most rigid decorum and morality in her 
own household, frowning especially upon all 
intemperance, and never permitting a pack of 
cards to be found within her doors. She was 
greatly beloved and respected by the son, whose 
mind she did so much to mould, and she lived 
to see him become one of the foremost states- 
men of the country. 

Young Benton was always fond of reading. 
He began his studies at home, and continued 
them at a grammar school taught by a young 
New Englander of good ability, a very large pro- 



EARLY LIFE. 25 

portion of the school-teachers of the country 
then coming from New England; indeed, school- 
teachers and peddlers were, on the whole, the 
chief contributions made by the Northeast to the 
personnel of the new Southwest. Benton then 
began a course at Chapel Hill, the University 
of North Carolina, but broke off before com- 
pleting it, as his mother decided to move her 
family westward to the almost unbroken wil- 
derness near Nashville, Tennessee, where his 
father had left them a large tract of land. But 
he was such an insatiable student and reader 
that he rapidly acquired a very extensive knowl- 
edge, not only of law, but of history and even of 
Latin and English literature, and thus became 
a well-read and cultivated, indeed a learned, 
man ; though his frequent displays of learning 
and knowledge were sometimes marked by a 
trace of that self-complacent, amusing pedantry 
so apt to characterize a really well-educated 
man who lives in a community in which he 
believes, and with which he has thoroughly 
identified himself, but whose members are for 
the most part below the average in mental 
cultivation. 

The Bentons founded a little town, named 
after them, and in which, of course, they took 
their position as leaders and rich landed propri- 
etors. It lay on the very outskirts of the Indian 



26 THOMAS UART BENTON. 

country ; indeed, the great war trail of the 
Southern Indians led right through the settle- 
ment, and they at all times swarmed around it. 
The change from the still somewhat rude civil- 
ization of North Carolina to the wildness on 
the border was far less abrupt and startling 
then than would be the case under similar cir- 
cumstances now, and the Bentons soon identi- 
fied themselves completely with the life and in- 
terests of the people around them. They even 
abandoned the Episcopalianism of their old 
home, and became Methodists, like their neigh- 
bors. Young Benton himself had his hands 
full, at first, in attending to his great backwoods 
farm, tilled by slaves, and in pushing the 
growth of the settlement by building first a 
rude log school-house (he himself taught school 
at one time, while studying law), and a meet- 
ing-house of the same primitive construction, 
then mills, roads, bridges, and so forth. The 
work hardened and developed him, and he 
readily enough turned into a regular frontiers- 
man of the better and richer sort. The neigh- 
boring town of Nashville was a raw, pretentious 
place, where horse-racing, cock - fighting, gam- 
bling, whiskey-drinking, and the various coarse 
vices which masquerade as pleasures in frontier 
towns, all throve in rank luxuriance. It was 
somewhat of a change from Benton's early 



EARLY LIFE. 27 

training, but he took to it kindly, and though 
never a vicious or debauched man, he bore his 
full share in the savage brawls, the shooting 
and stabbing affrays, which went to make up 
one of the leading features in the excessively 
unattractive social life of the place and epoch. 

At that time dueling prevailed more or less 
throughout the United States, and in the South 
and West to an extent never before or since 
attained. On the frontier, not only did every 
man of spirit expect now and then to be called 
on to engage in a duel, but he also had to make 
up his mind to take occasional part in bloody 
street-fights. Tennessee, the state where Benton 
then had his home, was famous for the affrays 
that took place within its borders ; and that 
they were common enough among the people at 
large may be gathered from the fact that they 
were of continual occurrence among judges, 
high state officials, and in the very legislature 
itself, where senators and assemblymen were 
always becoming involved in undignified rows 
and foolish squabbles, apparently without fear 
of exciting any unfavorable comment, as witness 
Davy Crockett's naive account of his early ex- 
periences as a backwoods member of the Tennes- 
see assembly. Like Jackson, Benton killed his 
man in a duel. This was much later, in 1817, 
when he was a citizen of Missouri. His oppo- 



28 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

nent was a lawyer named Lucas. They fought 
twice, on Bloody Island, near St. Louis. On 
the first occasion both were wounded ; on the 
second Lucas was killed. The latter came of a 
truculent family. A recent biographer of his 
father, Judge John R. Lucas, remarks, with 
refreshing unconsciousness of the grotesque 
humor of the chronicle : " This gentleman was 
one of the most remarkable men who ever 
settled west of the Mississippi River. . . . 
Towards the close of his life Judge Lucas 
became melancholy and dejected — the result 
of domestic affliction, for six of his sons met 
death by violence." One feels curious to know 
how the other sons died. 

But the most famous of Benton's affrays was 
that with Jackson himself, in 1813. This rose 
out of a duel of laughable rather than serious 
character, in which Benton's brother was 
worsted by General Carroll, afterwards one of 
Jackson's lieutenants at New Orleans. The 
encounter itself took place between the Benton 
brothers on one side, and on the other, Jackson, 
General Coffee, also of New Orleans fame, and 
another friend. The place was a great rambling 
Nashville inn, and the details were so intricate 
that probably not even the participants them- 
selves knew exactly what had taken place, 
while all the witnesses impartially contradicted 



EARLY LIFE. 29 

each other and themselves. At any rate, Jack- 
son was shot and Benton was pitched headlong 
down-stairs, and all the other combatants were 
more or less damaged ; but it ended in Jackson 
being carried off by his friends, leaving the 
Bentons masters of the field, where they 
strutted up and down and indulged in a good 
deal of loud bravado. Previous to this Benton 
and Jackson had been on the best of terms, and 
although there was naturally a temporary break 
in their friendship, yet it proved strong enough 
in the end to stand even such a violent wrench 
as that given by this preposterously senseless 
and almost fatal brawl. They not only became 
completely reconciled, but eventually even the 
closest and warmest of personal and political 
friends ; for Benton was as generous and for- 
giving as he was hot-tempered, and Jackson's 
ruder nature was at any rate free from any 
small meanness or malice. 

In spite of occasional interludes of this kind, 
which must have given a rather ferocious fillip 
to his otherwise monotonous life, Benton com- 
pleted his legal studies, was admitted to the 
bar, and began to practice as a frontier lawyer 
at Franklin. Very soon, however, he for the 
first time entered the more congenial field of 
politics, and in 1811 served a single term in 
the lower house of the Tennessee legislature. 



30 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Even thus early he made his mark. He had a 
bill passed introducing the circuit system into 
the state judiciary, a reform of much impor- 
tance, especially to the poorer class of litigants; 
and he also introduced, and had enacted into a 
law, a bill providing that a slave should have 
the same right to the full benefit of a jury trial 
as would a white man suffering under the same 
accusation. This last measure is noteworthy 
as foreshadowing the position which Benton 
afterwards took in national politics, where he 
appeared as a slave-holder, it is true, but as one 
of the most enlightened and least radical of his 
class. Its passage also showed the tendency of 
Southern opinion at the time, which was un- 
doubtedly in the direction of bettering the con- 
dition of the blacks, though the events of the 
next few years produced such a violent revul- 
sion of feeling concerning the negro race that 
this current of public opinion was completely 
reversed. Benton, however, was made of sturdy 
stuff, and as he grew older his views on the 
question did not alter as did those of most of 
his colleagues. 

Shortly after he left the legislature the War 
of 1812 broke out, and its events impressed on 
Benton another of what soon became his cardi- 
nal principles. The war was brought on by 
the South and West, the Democrats all favoring 



EARLY LIFE. 31 

it, while the Federalists, forming the then anti- 
Democratic party, especially in the Northeast, 
opposed it; and finally their more extreme 
members, at the famous Hartford Convention, 
passed resolutions supposed to tend towards the 
dissolution of the Union, and which brought 
upon the party the bitter condemnation of their 
antagonists. Says Benton himself: "At the 
time of its first appearance the right of seces- 
sion was repulsed and repudiated by the De- 
mocracy generally. . . . The leading language 
in respect to it south of the Potomac was that no 
state had a right to withdraw from the Union, 
. . . and that any attempt to dissolve it, or to 
obstruct the action of constitutional laws, was 
treason. If since that time political parties and 
sectional localities have exchanged attitudes on 
this question, it cannot alter the question of 
right." For, having once grasped an idea and 
made it his own, Benton clung to it with un- 
yielding tenacity, no matter whether it was or 
was not abandoned by the majority of those 
with whom he had been in the habit of acting. 
Thus early Benton's political character be- 
came moulded into the shape which it ever 
afterwards retained. He was a slave-holder, 
but as advanced as a slave-holder could be; he 
remained to a certain extent a Southerner, but 
his Southernism was of the type prevalent 



32 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

immediately after the Revolution, arid not of 
the kind that came to the fore prior to the 
Rebellion. He was much more a Westerner in 
his feelings, and more than all else he was 
emphatically a Union man. 

Like every other hot spirit of the West — 
and the West was full of little but hot spirits 
— Benton heartily favored the War of 1812. 
He served as a colonel of volunteers under 
Jackson, but never saw actual fighting, and his 
short term of soldiership was of no further 
account than to furnish an excuse to Polk, thir- 
ty-five years later, for nominating him com- 
manding general in the time of the Mexican 
War, — an incident which, as the nomination 
was rejected, may be regarded as merely ludi- 
crous, the gross impropriety of the act safely 
defying criticism. He was of genuine use, 
however, in calling on and exciting the volun- 
teers to come forward ; for he was a fluent 
speaker, of fine presence, and his pompous self- 
sufficiency was rather admired than otherwise 
by the frontiersmen, while his force, energy, and 
earnestness commanded their respect. He also, 
when Jackson's reckless impetuosity got him 
into a snarl with the feeble national adminis- 
tration, whose imbecile incapacity to carry on 
the war became day by day more painfully 
evident, went to Washington, and there finally 



EARLY LIFE. 33 

extricated his chief by dint of threatening that, 
if "justice" was not done him, Tennessee 
would, in future political contests, be found 
ranged with the administration's foes. For 
Benton already possessed political influence, and 
being, like most of his class, anti-Federalist, or 
Democratic, in sentiment, was therefore of the 
same party as the people at Washington, and 
was a man whose representations would have 
some weight with them. 

During his stay in Tennessee Benton's char- 
acter was greatly influenced by his being 
thrown into close contact with many of the 
extraordinary men who then or afterwards 
made their mark in the strange and picturesque 
annals of the Southwest. Jackson even thus 
early loomed up as the greatest and arch-typ- 
ical representative of his people and his section. 
The religious bent of the tim e was shown in 
the life of the gyjJprTtBg^^^^M e thodis t, 
Peter CartwrigLKf ww£>, in m^lf^S^L back- 
woods, was a pJj^ie^^njd^aTjtkat^panent 
of " muscular Cttrifctianity "4ft?lf /$d&itiuMAbe- 
fore the day wheT^4jg^r"T3$slrap Selw^^ind 
Charles Kingsley, i i rfwij|i if fpilll ftTSaF tne 
most highly civilized class esorSR^fl&L There 
was David Crockett, rifleman and congressman, 
doomed to a tragic and heroic death in that 
remarkable conflict of which it was said at the 

3 



34 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

time, that " Thermopylae had its messengers of 
death, but the Alamo had none : " and there 
was Houston, who, after a singular and roman- 
tic career, became the greatest of the states- 
men and soldiers of Texas. It was these men, 
and their like, who, under the shadow of world- 
old forests and in the sunlight of the great, 
lonely plains, wrought out the destinies of a na- 
tion and a continent, and who, with their rude 
war-craft and state-craft, solved problems that, 
in the importance of their results, dwarf the is- 
sues of all European struggles since the day of 
Waterloo as completely as the Punic wars in 
their outcome threw into the shade the conse- 
quences of the wars waged at the same time 
between the different Greek monarchies. 

Benton, in his mental training, came much 
nearer to the statesmen of the sea-board, and 
was far better bred and better educated, than 
the rest of the men around Jhim. But he was, 
and was felt by them to be, thoroughly one of 
their number, and the most able expounder of 
their views ; and it is j ust because he is so com- 
pletely the type of a great and important class, 
rather than because even of his undoubted and 
commanding ability as a statesman, that his 
life and public services will always repay study. 
His vanity and boastf ulness were faults which he 
shared with almost all his people ; and, after all, 



EARLY LIFE. 35 

if they overrated the consequence of their own 
deeds, the deeds, nevertheless, did possess great 
importance, and their fault was slight com- 
pared to that committed by some of us at the 
present day, who have gone to the opposite ex- 
treme and try to belittle the actions of our 
fathers. • Benton was deeply imbued with the 
masterful, overbearing spirit of the West, — a 
spirit whose manifestations are not always agree- 
able, but the possession of which is certainly a 
most healthy sign of the virile strength of a 
young community. He thoroughly appreciated 
that he was helping to shape the future of a 
country, whose wonderful development is the 
most important feature in the history of the 
nineteenth century; the non- appreciation of 
which fact is in itself sufficient utterly to dis- 
qualify any American statesman from rising to 
the first rank. 

It was not in Tennessee, however, that Benton 
rose to political prominence, for shortly after 
the close of the war he crossed the Mississippi 
and made his permanent home in the territory 
of Missouri. Missouri was then our extreme 
western outpost, and its citizens possessed the 
characteristic western traits to an even ex- 
aggerated extent. The people were pushing, 
restless, and hardy ; they were lawless and vio- 
lent to a degree. In spite of the culture and 



36 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

education of some families, society, as a whole, 
was marked by florid tmconventionality and 
rawness. The general and widespread intem- 
perance of the judges and high officials of state 
was even more marked than their proclivities 
for brawling. The lawyers, as usual, furnished 
the bulk of the politicians ; success at the bar 
depended less upon learning than upon " push " 
and audacity. The fatal feuds between indi- 
viduals and families were as frequent and as 
bloody as among Highland clans a century be- 
fore. The following quotations are taken at 
random from a work on the Bench and Bar of 
Missouri, by an ex-judge of its supreme court: 
" A man by the name of Hiram K. Turk, and 
four sons, settled in 1889 near Warsaw, and a 
personal difficulty occurred between them and 
a family of the name of Jones, resulting in 
the death of one or two. The people began to 
take sides with one or the other, and finally 
a general outbreak took place, in which many 
were killed, resulting in a general reign of 
terror and of violence beyond the power of the 
law to subdue." The social annals of this 
pleasant town of Warsaw could not normally 
have been dull ; in 1844, for instance, they were 
enlivened by Judge Cherry and Senator Major 
fighting to the death on one of its principal 
streets, the latter being slain. The judges 



EARLY LIFE. 37 

themselves were by no means bigoted in their 
support of law and order. " In those days it 
was common for people to settle their quarrels 
during court week. . . . Judge Allen took 
great delight in these exhibitions, and would at 
any time adjourn his court to witness one. . . . 
He (Allen) always traveled with a holster of 
large pistols in front of his saddle, and a knife 
with a blade at least a foot long." Hannibal 
Chollop was no mere creature of fancy ; on the 
contrary, his name was legion, and he flourished 
rankly in every town throughout the Mississippi 
valley. But, after all, this ruffianism was really 
not a whit worse in its effects on the national 
character than was the case with certain of the 
"universal peace" and " non-resistance " de- 
velopments in the Northeastern States; in fact, 
it was more healthy. A class of professional 
non-combatants is as hurtful to the real, healthy 
growth of a nation as is a class of fire-eaters; 
for a weakness or folly is nationally as bad as a 
vice, or worse ; and, in the long run, a Quaker 
may be quite as undesirable a citizen as is a 
duelist. No man who is not willing to bear 
arms and to fight for his rights can give a good 
reason why he should be entitled to the privi- 
lege of living in a free community. The de- 
cline of the militant spirit in the Northeast 
during the first half of this centurv was much 



38 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

to be regretted. To it is due, more than to any 
other cause, the undoubted average individual 
inferiority of the Northern compared to the 
Southern troops ; at any rate, at the beginning 
of the great war of the Rebellion. The South- 
erners, by their whole mode of living, their 
habits, and their love of out-door sports, kept 
up their warlike spirit ; while in the North the 
so-called upper classes developed along the lines 
of a wealthy and timid bourgeoisie type, meas- 
uring everything by a mercantile standard (a 
peculiarly debasing one if taken purely by 
itself), and submitting to be ruled in local 
affairs by low foreign mobs, and in national 
matters by their arrogant Southern kinsmen. 
The militant spirit of these last certainly stood 
them in good stead in the Civil War. The 
world has never seen better soldiers than those 
who followed Lee ; and their leader will un- 
doubtedly rank as without any exception the 
very greatest of all the great captains that the 
English-speaking peoples have brought forth 
— and this, although the last and chief of his 
antagonists may himself claim to stand as the 
full equal of Marlborough and Wellington. 

The other Western States still kept touch on 
the old colonial communities of the sea-coast, 
having a second or alternative outlet through 
Louisiana, newly acquired by the LTnited States, 



EARLY LIFE. 39 

it is true, but which was nevertheless an old set- 
tled land. Missouri, however, had lost all con- 
nection with the sea-coast, and though, through 
her great river towns, swarming with raftsmen 
and flat-boatmen, she drove her main and most 
thriving trade with the other Mississippi cities, 
yet her restless and adventure-loving citizens 
were already seeking other outlets for their ac- 
tivity, and were establishing trade relations with 
the Mexicans ; being thus the earliest among 
our people to come into active contact with the 
Hispano-Indian race from whom we afterwards 
wrested so large a part of their inheritance. 
Missouri was thrust out beyond the Mississippi 
into the vast plains-country of the Far West, 
and except on the river-front was completely 
isolated, being flanked on every side by great 
stretches of level wilderness, inhabited by roam- 
ing tribes of warlike Indians. Thus for the 
first time the borderers began to number in 
their ranks plainsmen as well as backwoods- 
men. In such a community there were sure to 
be numbers of men anxious to take part in any 
enterprise that united the chance of great pe- 
cuniary gain with the certainty of even greater 
personal risk, and both these conditions were 
fulfilled in the trading expeditions pushed out 
from Missouri across the trackless wastes lying 
between it and the fringe of Mexican settle- 



40 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

ments on the Rio del Norte. The route fol- 
lowed by these caravans, which brought back 
furs and precious metals, soon became famous 
under the name of the Santa Fe trail ; and 
the story of the perils, hardships, and gains of 
the adventurous traders who followed it would 
make one of the most striking chapters of 
American history. 

Among such people Benton's views and habits 
of thought became more markedly Western and 
ultra-American than ever, especially in regard 
to our encroachments upon the territory of 
neighboring powers. The general feeling in 
the West upon this last subject afterwards 
crystallized into what became known as the 
" Manifest Destiny " idea, which, reduced to its 
simplest terms, was : that it was our manifest 
destiny to swallow up the land of all adjoining 
nations who were too weak to withstand us ; a 
theory that forthwith obtained immense pop- 
ularity among all statesmen of easy interna- 
tional morality. It cannot be too often re- 
peated that no one can understand even the 
domestic, and more especially the foreign, pol- 
icy of Benton and his school without first un- 
derstanding the surroundings amidst which they 
had been brought up and the people whose 
chosen representatives they were. Recent his- 
torians, for instance, always speak as if our 



EARLY LIFE. 41 

grasping after territory in the Southwest was 
due solely to the desire of the Southerners to 
acquire lands out of which to carve new slave- 
holding states, and as if it was merely a move 
in the interests of the slave-power. This is 
true enough so far as the motives of Calhoun, 
Tyler, and the other public leaders of the Gulf 
and southern sea-board states were concerned. 
But the hearty Western support given to the 
movement was due to entirely different causes, 
the chief among them being the fact that the 
Westerners honestly believed themselves to be 
indeed created the heirs of the earth, or at least 
of so much of it as was known by the name of 
North America, and were prepared to struggle 
stoutly for the immediate possession of their 



heritage. 



One of Benton's earliest public utterances 
was in regard to a matter which precisely 
illustrates this feeling. It was while Missouri 
was still a territory, and when Benton, then a 
prominent member of the St. Louis bar, had 
by his force, capacity, and power as a public 
speaker already become well known among his 
future constituents. The treaty with Spain, by 
which we secured Florida, was then before the 
Senate, which body had to consider it several 
times, owing to the dull irresolution and sloth 
of the Spanish government in ratifying it. The 



42 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

bounds it gave us were far too narrow to suit 
the more fiery Western spirits, and these cheered 
Benton to the echo when he#ttacked it in pub- 
lic with fierce vehemence. " The magnificent 
valley of the Mississippi is ours, with all its 
fountains, springs, and floods ; and woe to the 
statesman who shall undertake to surrender one 
drop of its water, one inch of its soil to any for- 
eign power." So he said, his words ringing 
with the boastful confidence so well liked by 
the masterful men of the West, strong in their 
youth, and proudly conscious of their strength. 
The treaty was ratified in the Senate, neverthe- 
less, all the old Southern States favoring it, 
and the only votes at any stage recorded against 
it being of four Western senators, coming re- 
spectively from Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and Louisiana. So that in 1818, at any rate, the 
desire for territorial aggrandizement at the ex- 
pense of Maine or Mexico was common to the 
West as a whole, both to the free and the slave 
states, and was not exclusively favored by the 
Southerners. The only effect of Benton's speech 
was to give rise to the idea that he was hostile 
to the Southern and Democratic administration 
at Washington, and against this feeling he had 
to contend in the course of his successful can- 
didacy for the United States senatorship the 
following year, when Missouri was claiming ad- 
mittance to the Union. 



EARLY LIFE. 43 

It was in reference to this matter of admit- 
ting Missouri that the slavery question for the 
first time made its appearance in national 
politics, where it threw everything into confu- 
sion and for the moment overshadowed all else ; 
though it vanished almost as quickly as it had 
appeared, and did not again come to the front 
for several years. The Northerners, as a whole, 
desiring to " restrict " the growth of slav- 
ery and the slave-power, demanded that Mis- 
souri, before being admitted as a state, should 
abolish slavery within her boundaries. The 
South was equally determined that she should 
be admitted as a slave state ; and for the first 
time the politicians of the country divided on 
geographical rather than on party lines, though 
the division proved but temporary, and was of 
but little interest except as foreshadowing what 
was to come a score of years later. Even within 
the territory itself the same contest was carried 
on with the violence bred by political conflicts 
in frontier states, there being a very respecta- 
ble " restriction " party, which favored aboli- 
tion. Benton was himself a slave-holder, and 
as the question was in no way one between the 
East and the West, or between the Union as a 
whole and any part of it, he naturally gave full 
swing to his Southern feelings, and entered with 
tremendous vigor into the contest on the anti- 



44 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

restriction side. So successful were his efforts, 
and so great was the majority of the Mis- 
sourians who sympathized with him, that the 
restrictionists were completely routed and suc- 
ceeded in electing but one delegate to the con- 
stitutional convention. In Congress the matter 
was finally settled by the passage of the famous 
Missouri Compromise bill, a measure Southern 
in its origin, but approved at the time by many 
if not most Northerners, and disapproved by 
not a few Southerners. Benton heartily believed 
in it, announcing somewhat vaguely that he 
was " equally opposed to slavery agitation and 
to slavery extension." By its terms Missouri 
was admitted as a slave state, while slavery was 
abolished in all the rest of the old province of 
Louisiana lying north and west of it and north of 
the parallel of 36° 30'. Owing to an objection- 
able clause in its Constitution, the admission 
was not fully completed until 1821, and then 
only through the instrumentality of Henry 
Clay. But Benton took his seat immediately, 
and entered on his thirty years' of service in 
the United States Senate. His appearance in 
national politics was thus coincident with the 
appearance of the question which, it is true, 
almost immediately sank out of sight for a 
period of fifteen years, but which then reap- 
peared to stay for good and to become of pro- 



EARLY LIFE. 45 

gressively absorbing importance, until, combin- 
ing itself with the still greater question of na- 
tional unity, it dwarfed all other' issues, cleft 
the West as well as the East asunder, and, as 
one of its minor results, brought about the 
political downfall of Benton himself and of his 
whole school in what were called the Border 
States. 

Before entering the Senate, Benton did some- 
thing which well illustrates his peculiar upright- 
ness, and the care which he took to keep his pub- 
lic acts free from the least suspicion of improper 
influence. When he was at the bar in St. Louis, 
real estate litigation was much the most impor- 
tant branch of legal business. The condition of 
Missouri land-titles was very mixed, since many 
of them were based upon the thousands of " con- 
cessions " of land made by the old French and 
Spanish governments, which had been ratified 
by Congress, but subject to certain conditions 
which the Creole inhabitants, being ignorant 
and lawless, had generally failed to fulfill. By 
an act of Congress these inchoate claims were to 
be brought before the United States recorder of 
land titles ; and the Missouri bar were divided 
as to what action should be taken on them, the 
majority insisting that they should be held void, 
while Benton headed the opposite party, which 
was averse to forfeiting property on technical 



46 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

grounds, and advocated the confirmation of 
every honest claim. Further and important 
legislation was needed to provide for these 
claims. Benton, being much the most influen- 
tial member of the bar who had advocated the 
confirmation of the claims, and being so able, 
honest, and energetic, was the favorite counsel 
of the claimants, and had hundreds of their 
titles under his professional charge. Of course 
in such cases the compensation of the lawyer 
depended solely upon his success ; and success 
to Benton would have meant wealth. Never- 
theless, and though his action was greatly to 
his own pecuniary hurt, the first thing he did 
when elected senator was to convene his clients, 
and tell them that henceforth he could have 
nothing more to do, as their attorney, with the 
prosecution of their claims, giving as his reason 
that their success largely depended upon the ac- 
tion of Congress, of which he was now himself 
a member, so that he was bound to consult, not 
any private interest, but the good of the com- 
munity as a whole. He even refused to desig- 
nate his successor in the causes, saying that he 
was determined not only to be quite unbiased 
in acting upon the subject of these claims as 
senator, but not to have, nor to be suspected 
of having, any personal interest in the fate of 
any of them. Many a modern statesman might 
most profitably copy his sensitiveness. 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 

When Benton took his seat in the United 
States Senate, Monroe, the last president of 
the great house of Virginia, was about beginning 
his second term. He was a courteous, high-bred 
gentleman, of no especial ability, but well fitted 
to act as presidential figure-head during the 
politically quiet years of that era of good feel- 
ing which lasted from 1816 till 1824. The 
Federalist party, after its conduct during the 
war, had vanished into well-deserved obscurity, 
and though influences of various sorts were 
working most powerfully to split the dominant 
and all-embracing Democracy into factional 
fragments, these movements had not yet come 
to a head. 

The slavery question, it cannot be too often 
said, was as yet of little or no political conse- 
quence. The violent excitement over the ad- 
mission of Missouri had subsided as quickly 
as it had arisen ; and though the Compromise 
bill was of immense importance in itself, and 



48 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

still more as giving a hint of what was to come, 
it must be remembered that its effect upon 
general politics, during the years immediately 
succeeding its passage, was slight. Later on, the 
slavery question became of such paramount con- 
sequence, and so completely identified with the 
movement for the dissolution of the Union, that 
it seems impossible for even the best of recent 
historians of American politics to understand 
that such was not the case at this time. One 
writer of note even goes so far as to state that 
" From the night of March 2, 1820, party his- 
tory is made up without interruption or break 
of the development of geographical [the context 
shows this to mean Northern and Southern] 
parties." There is very little ground for such 
a sweeping assertion until a considerable time 
after the date indicated ; indeed, it was more 
than ten years later before any symptom of the 
development spoken of became at all marked. 
Until then, parties divided even less on geo- 
graphical lines than had been the case earlier, 
during the last years of the existence of the 
Federalists ; and what little division there was 
had no reference to slavery. Nor was it till 
nearly a score of years after the passage of the 
Missouri Compromise bill that the separatist 
spirit began to identify itself for good with the 
idea of the maintenance of slavery. Previously 



EARLY YEARS IN TEE SENATE. 49 

to that there had been outbursts of separatist 
feeling in different states, but always due to en- 
tirely different causes. Georgia flared up in hot 
defiance of the federal government, when the 
latter rubbed against her on the question of re- 
moving the Cherokees from within her borders. 
But her having negro slaves did not affect her 
feelings in the least, and her attitude was just 
such as any Western state with Indians on its 
frontier is now apt to assume so far as it dares, 
— such an attitude as Arizona, for example, 
would at this moment take in reference to the 
Apaches, if she were able. Slavery was doubt- 
less remotely one of the irritating causes that 
combined to work South Carolina up to a fever 
heat of insanity over the nullification excite- 
ment. But in its immediate origin nullification 
arose from the outcry against the protective 
tariff, and it is almost as unfair to ascribe it 
in any way to the influence of slavery as it 
would be to assign a similar cause for the Vir- 
ginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, or to 
say that the absence of slavery was the reason 
for the abortively disloyal agitation in New 
England, which culminated in the Hartford Con- 
vention. The separatist feeling is ingrained in 
the fibre of our race, and though in itself a 
most dangerous failing and weakness, is yet 
merely a perversion and distortion of the defiant 



50 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

and self-reliant independence of spirit which is 
one of the chief of the race virtues ; and slavery 
was partly the cause and partly merely the 
occasion of the abnormal growth of the separa- 
tist movement in the South. Nor was the tariff 
question so intimately associated with that of 
slavery as has been commonly asserted. This 
might be easily guessed from the fact that the 
originator and chief advocate of a high tariff 
himself came from a slave state, and drew many 
of his warmest supporters from among the slave- 
holding sugar-planters. Except in the futile 
discussion over the proposed Panama Congress it 
was not till Benton's third senatorial term that 
slavery became of really great weight in politics. 
One of the first subjects that attracted Ben- 
ton's attention in the Senate was the Oregon 
question, and on this he showed himself at once 
in his true character as a Western man, proud 
alike of every part of his country, and as desir- 
ous of seeing the West extended in a northerly 
as in a southerly direction. Himself a slave- 
holder, from a slave state, he was one of the 
earliest and most vehement advocates of the ex- 
tension of our free territory northwards along 
the Pacific coast. All the country stretching 
north and south of the Oregon River was then 
held by the United States in joint possession 
with Great Britain. But the whole region was 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 51 

still entirely unsettled, and as a matter of fact 
our British rivals were the only parties in actual 
occupation. The title to the territory was 
doubtful, as must always be the case when it 
rests upon the inaccurate maps of forgotten ex- 
plorers, or upon the chance landings of stray 
sailors and traders, especially if the land in 
dispute is unoccupied and of vast but uncer- 
tain extent, of little present value, and far dis- 
tant from the powers claiming it. The real 
truth is that such titles are of very little prac- 
tical value, and are rightly enough disregarded 
by any nations strong enough to do so. Ben- 
ton's intense Americanism, and his pride and 
confidence in his country and in her unlimited 
capacity for growth of every sort, gifted him 
with the power to look much farther into the 
future, as regarded the expansion of the United 
States, than did his colleagues ; and moreover 
caused him to consider the question from a 
much more far-seeing and statesmanlike stand- 
point. The land belonged to no man, and yet 
was sure to become very valuable ; our title to it 
was not very good, but was probably better than 
that of any one else. Sooner or later it would 
be filled with the overflow of our population, 
and would border on our dominion, and on 
our dominion alone. It was therefore just, and 
moreover in the highest degree desirable, that 



52 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

it should be made a part of that dominion at 
the earliest possible moment. Benton intro- 
duced a bill to enable the president to terminate 
the arrangement with Great Britain and make 
a definite settlement in our favor ; and though 
the Senate refused to pass it, yet he had the 
satisfaction of bringing the subject prominently 
before the people, and, moreover, of outlining 
the way in which it would have to be and was 
finally settled. In one of his speeches on the 
matter he said, using rather highflown language, 
(for he was unfortunately deficient in sense of 
humor) : " Upon the people of Eastern Asia the 
establishment of a civilized power on the oppo- 
site coast of America could not fail to produce 
great and wonderful benefits. Science, liberal 
principles in government, and the true religion 
might cast their lights across the intervening 
sea. The valley of the Columbia might become 
the granaiy of China and Japan, and an outlet 
to their imprisoned and exuberant population." 
Could he have foreseen how, in the future, the 
Americans of the valley of the Columbia would 
greet the "imprisoned and exuberant popula- 
tion " of China, he would probably have been 
more doubtful as to the willingness of the latter 
empire to accept our standard of the true relig- 
ion and liberal principles of government. In 
the course of the same speech he for the first 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 53 

time, and by what was then considered a bold 
flight of imagination, suggested the possibility 
of sending foreign ministers to the Oriental 
nations, to China, Japan, and Persia, u and even 
to the Grand Turk." 

Better success attended a bill he introduced 
to establish a trading-road from Missouri through 
the Indian country to New Mexico, which, after 
much debate, passed both houses and was signed 
by President Monroe. The road thus marked 
out and established became, and remained for 
many years, a great thoroughfare, and among 
the chief of the channels through which our for- 
eign commerce flowed. Until Benton secured 
the enactment of this law, so important to the 
interests and development of the West, the 
overland trade with Mexico had been carried 
on by individual effort and at the cost of incal- 
culable hazard, hardship, and risk of life. Mex- 
ico, with its gold and silver mines, its strange 
physical features, its population utterly foreign 
to us in race, religion, speech, and ways of life, 
and especially because of the glamour of mys- 
tery which surrounded it and partly shrouded 
it from sight, always dazzled and strongly at- 
tracted the minds of the Southwesterners, occu- 
pying much the same place in their thoughts 
that the Spanish Main did in the imagination of 
England during the reign of Elizabeth. The 



54 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

young men of the Mississippi valley looked upon 
an expedition with one of the bands of armed 
traders, who wound their way across Indian- 
haunted wastes, through deep canyons and over 
lofty mountain passes, to Santa Fe, Chihuahua, 
and Sonora, with the same feelings of eager ex- 
citement and longing that were doubtless felt by 
some of their forefathers more than two centu- 
ries previously in regard to the cruises of Drake 
and Hawkins. The long wagon trains or pack 
trains of the traders carried with them all kinds 
of goods, but especially cotton, and brought back 
gold and silver bullion, bales of furs and droves 
of mules ; and, moreover, they brought back tales 
of lawless adventure, of great gains and losses, 
of fights against Indians and Mexicans, and of 
triumphs and privations, which still further in- 
flamed the minds of the Western men. Where 
they had already gone as traders, who could on 
occasion fight, they all hoped on some future 
day to go as warriors, who would acquire gain 
by their conquests. These hopes were openly 
expressed, and with very little more idea of 
there being any right or wrong in the matter 
than so many Norse Vikings might have felt. 
The Southwesterners are credited with alto- 
gether too complex motives when it is supposed 
that they were actuated in regard to the conquest 
of northern Mexico by a desire to provide for 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 55 

additional slave states to offset the growth of 
the North ; their emotions in regard to their 
neighbor's land were in the main perfectly sim- 
ple and purely piratical. That the Northeast 
did not share in the greed for new territory 
felt by the other sections of the country was 
due partly to the decline in its militant spirit, 
(a decline on many accounts sincerely to be 
regretted,) and partly to its geographical situ- 
ation, since it adjoined Canada, an unattrac- 
tive and already well- settled country, jealously 
guarded by the might of Great Britain. 

Another question, on which Benton showed 
himself to be thoroughly a representative of 
Western sentiment, was the removal of the 
Indian tribes. Here he took a most active and 
prominent part in reporting and favoring the 
bills, and in advocating the treaties, by which 
the Indian tribes of the South and West were 
forced or induced, (for the latter word was very 
frequently used as a euphemistic synonym of 
the former,) to abandon great tracts of territory 
to the whites and to move farther away from 
the boundaries of their ever-encroaching civili- 
zation. Nor was his action wholly limited to 
the Senate, for it was at his instance that 
General Clark, at St. Louis, concluded the 
treaties with the Kansas and Osage tribes, by 
which the latter surrendered to the United 



56 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

States all the vast territory which they nom- 
inally owned west of Missouri and Arkansas, 
except small reserves for themselves. Benton, 
as was to be expected, took the frontier view 
of the Indian question, which, by the way, 
though often wrong, is much more apt to be 
right than is the so-called humanitarian or 
Eastern view. But, so far as was compatible 
with having the Indians removed, he always 
endeavored to have them kindly and humanely 
treated. There was, of course, much injustice 
and wrong inevitably attendant upon the In- 
dian policy advocated by him, and by the rest 
of the Southern and Western statesmen ; but 
it is difficult to see what other course could 
have been pursued with most of the tribes. In 
the Western States there were then sixty mil- 
lions of acres of the best land, owned in great 
tracts by barbarous or half-barbarous Indians, 
who were always troublesome and often dan- 
gerous neighbors, and who did not come in any 
way under the laws of the states in which they 
lived. The states thus encumbered would evi- 
dently never have been satisfied until all their 
soil was under their own jurisdiction and open 
to settlement. The Cherokees had advanced 
far on the road toward civilization, and it was 
undoubtedly a cruel grief and wrong to take 
them away from their homes ; but the only aL 



EARLY YEARS IN TEE SENATE. 57 

ternative would have been to deprive them of 
much of their land, and to provide for their 
gradually becoming citizens of the states in 
which they were. For a movement of this sort 
the times were not then, and, unfortunately, 
are not yet ripe. 

Much maudlin nonsense has been written 
about the governmental treatment of the In- 
dians, especially as regards taking their land. 
For the simple truth is that they had no possi- 
ble title to most of the lands we took, not even 
that of occupancy, and at the most were in 
possession merely by virtue of having butch- 
ered the previous inhabitants. For many of 
its actions towards them the government does 
indeed deserve the severest criticism; but it 
has erred quite as often on the side of too much 
leniency as on the side of too much severity. 
From the very nature of things, it was wholly 
impossible that there should not be much mu- 
tual wrong-doing and injury in the intercourse 
between the Indians and ourselves. It was 
equally out of the question to let them remain 
as they were, and to bring the bulk of their 
number up to our standard of civilization with 
sufficient speed to enable them to accommodate 
themselves to the changed condition of their 
surroundings. The policy towards them advo- 
cated by Benton, which was much the same as, 



58 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

although more humane than, that followed by- 
most other Western men who have had practi- 
cally to face the problem, worked harshly in 
many instances, and was the cause of a certain 
amount of temporary suffering. But it was 
infinitely better for the nation, as a whole, and, 
in the end, was really more just and merciful, 
than it would have been to attempt following 
out any of the visionary schemes which the 
more impracticable Indian enthusiasts are fond 
of recommending. 

It was during Monroe's last term that Henry 
Clay brought in the first protective tariff bill, 
as distinguished from tariff bills to raise reve- 
nue with protection as an incident only. It was 
passed by a curiously mixed vote, which hardly 
indicated any one's future position on the tariff 
excepting that of Clay himself ; Massachusetts, 
under the lead of Webster, joining hands with 
the Southern sea-coast states to oppose it, while 
Tennessee and New York split, and Missouri 
and Kentucky, together with most of the North, 
favored it. Benton voted for it, but on the 
great question of internal improvements he 
stood out clearly for the views that he ever 
afterwards held. This was first brought up by 
the veto, on constitutional grounds, of the 
Cumberland Road bill, which had previously 
passed both houses with singular unanimit}^ 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 59 

Benton's vote being one of the very few re- 
corded against it. In regard to all such matters 
Benton was strongly in favor of a strict con- 
struction of the Constitution and of guarding 
the rights of the states, in spite of his devoted 
attachment to the Union. While voting against 
this bill, and denying the power or the right of 
the federal government to take charge of im- 
provements which would benefit one state only, 
Benton was nevertheless careful to reserve to 
himself the right to support measures for im- 
proving national rivers or harbors yielding rev- 
enues. The trouble is, that however much the 
two classes of cases may differ in point of ex- 
pediency, they overlap so completely that it 
is wholly impossible to draw a hard and fast 
line between them, and the question of consti- 
tutionality, if waived in the one instance, can 
scarcely with propriety be raised in the other. 
With the close of Monroe's second term the 
" era of good feeling " came to an end, and the 
great Democratic-Republican party split up into 
several fragments, which gradually crystallized 
round two centres. But in 1824 this process 
was still incomplete, and the presidential elec- 
tion of that year was a simple scramble be- 
tween four different candidates, — Jackson, 
Adams, Clay, and Crawford. Jackson had the 
greatest number of votes, but as no one had 



60 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

a majority, the election was thrown into the 
House of Representatives, where the Clay men, 
inasmuch as their candidate was out of the race, 
went over to Adams and elected him. Benton 
at the time, and afterwards in his " Thirty 
Years' View," inveighed against this choice as 
being a violation of what he called the " prin- 
ciple demos krateo " — a barbarous phrase for 
which he had a great fondness, and which he 
used and misused on every possible occasion, 
whether in speaking or writing. He insisted 
that, as Jackson had secured the majority of 
the electoral vote, it was the duty of the House 
of Representatives to ratify promptly this 
" choice of the people." The Constitution ex- 
pressly provided that this need not be done. 
So Benton, who on questions of state rights 
and internal improvements was so pronounced 
a stickler for a strict construction of the Con- 
stitution, here coolly assumed the absurd posi- 
tion that the Constitution was wrong on this 
particular point, and should be disregarded, on 
the ground that there was a struggle " between 
the theory of the Constitution and the demo- 
cratic principle." His proposition was ridicu- 
lous. The " democratic principle " had nothing 
more to do with the matter than had the law 
of gravitation. Either the Constitution was or 
it was not to be accepted as a serious document, 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 61 

that meant something ; in the former case the 
election of Adams was proper in every aspect, 
in the latter it was unnecessary to have held 
any election at all. 

At this period every one was floundering 
about in efforts to establish political relations, 
Benton not less than others ; for he had begun 
the canvass as a supporter of Clay, and had 
then gone over to Crawford. But at the end 
he had become a Jacksonian Democrat, and 
during the rest of his political career he figured 
as the most prominent representative of the 
Jacksonian Democracy in the Senate. Van 
Buren himself, afterwards Jackson's prime fa- 
vorite and political heir, was a Crawford man 
during this campaign. 

Adams, after his election, which was owing 
to Clay's support, gave Clay the position of 
secretary of state in his cabinet. The affair 
unquestionably had an unfortunate look, and 
the Jacksonians, especially Jackson, at once 
raised a great hue and cry that there had been 
a corrupt bargain. Benton, much to his credit, 
refused to join in the outcry, stating that he 
had good and sufficient reasons — which he gave 
— to be sure of its falsity; a position which 
brought him into temporary disfavor with many 
of his party associates, and which a man who 
had Benton's ambition and bitter partisanship, 



62 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

without having his sturdy pluck, would have 
hesitated to take. The assault was directed 
with especial bitterness against Clay, whom 
% Jackson ever afterwards included in the very 
large list of individuals whom he hated with 
the most rancorous and unreasoning virulence. 
Randolph of Roanoke, the privileged eccentric 
of the Senate, in one of those long harangues 
in which he touched upon everybody and every- 
thing, except possibly the point at issue, made 
a rabid onslaught upon the Clay-Adams coali- 
tion as an alliance of "the blackleg and the 
Puritan." Clay, who was susceptible enough 
to the charge of loose living, but who was a 
man of rigid honor and rather fond than other- 
wise of fighting, promptly challenged hirn, and 
a harmless interchange of shots took place. 
Benton was on the field as the friend of both 
parties, and his account of the affair is very 
amusing in its description of the solemn, hair- 
splitting punctilio with which it is evident that 
both Randolph and many of his contemporaries 
regarded points of dueling honor, which to us 
seem either absurd, trivial, or wholly incompre- 
hensible. 

Two tolerably well-defined parties now 
emerged from the chaos of contending politi- 
cians : one was the party of the administration, 
whose members called themselves National Re- 



EARLY TEARS IN THE SENATE. 63 

publicans, and later on Whigs ; the other was 
the Jacksonian Democracy. Adams's inaugural 
address and first message outlined the Whig 
policy as favoring a protective tariff, internal 
improvements, and a free construction of the 
Constitution generally. The Jacksonians ac- 
cordingly took the opposite side on all these 
points, partly from principle and partly from 
perversity. In the Senate they assailed with 
turgid eloquence every administration measure, 
whether it was good or bad, very much of their 
opposition being purely factious in character. 
There has never been a time when there was 
more rabid, objectless, and unscrupulous dis- 
play of partisanship. Benton, little to his 
credit, was a leader in these purposeless con- 
flicts. The most furious of them took place 
over the proposed Panama mission. This was 
a scheme that originated in the fertile brain of 
Henry Clay, whose Americanism was of a type 
quite as pronounced as Benton's, and who was 
always inclined to drag us into a position of 
hostility to European powers. The Spanish- 
American States, having succeeded in winning 
their independence from Spain, were desirous of 
establishing some principle of concert in action 
among the American republics as a whole, and 
for this purpose proposed to hold an inter- 
national congress at Panama. Clay's fondness 



64 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

for a spirited and spectacular foreign policy- 
made him grasp eagerly at the chance of trans- 
forming the United States into the head of an 
American league of free republics, which would 
be a kind of cis-Atlantic offset to the Holy Al- 
liance of European despotisms. Adams took 
up the idea, nominated ministers to the Panama 
Congress, and gave his reasons for his course in 
a special message to the Senate. The adminis- 
tration men drew the most rosy and impossible 
pictures of the incalculable benefits which would 
be derived from the proposed congress ; and the 
Jacksonians attacked it with an exaggerated 
denunciation that was even less justified by the 
facts. 

Adams's message was properly open to at- 
tack on one or two points; notably in reference 
to its proposals that we should endeavor to get 
the Spanish- American States to introduce re- 
ligious tolerance within their borders. It was 
certainly an unhappy suggestion that we should 
endeavor to remove the mote of religious in- 
tolerance from our brother's eye while indig- 
nantly resenting the least allusion to the beam 
of slavery in our own. It was on this very 
point of slavery that the real opposition hinged. 
The Spanish States had emancipated their com- 
paratively small negro populations, and, as is 
usually the case with Latin nations, did not 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 65 

have a very strong caste feeling against the 
blacks, some of whom accordingly had risen to 
high civic and military rank; and they also 
proposed to admit to their congress the negro 
republic of Hayti. Certain of the slave-holders 
of the South fiercely objected to any such asso- 
ciation ; and on this occasion Benton for once 
led and voiced the ultra-Southern feeling on the 
subject, announcing in his speech that diplo- 
matic intercourse with Hayti should not even 
be discussed in the senate chamber, and that 
we could have no association with republics 
who had " black generals in their armies and 
mulatto senators in their congresses." But this 
feeling on the part of the slave-holders against 
the measure was largely, although not wholly, 
spurious ; and really had less to do with the at- 
titude of the Jacksonian Democrats than had 
a mere factious opposition to Adams and Clay. 
This was shown by the vote on the confirmation 
of the ministers, when the senators divided on 
party and not on sectional lines. The nomina- 
tions were confirmed, but not till after such a 
length of time that the ministers were unable to 
reach Panama until after the congress had ad- 
journed. 

The Oregon question again came up during 
Adams's term, the administration favoring the 
renewal of the joint occupation convention, by 



QQ THOMAS HART BENTON. 

which we held the country in common with 
Great Britain. There was not much public 
feeling in the matter ; in the East there was 
none whatever. But Benton, when he opposed 
the renewal, and claimed the whole territory as 
ours, gave expression to the desires of all the 
Westerners who thought over the subject at 
all. He was followed by only half a dozen 
senators, all but one from the West, and from 
both sides of the Ohio — Illinois, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Mississippi ; the Northwest and 
Southwest as usual acting together. 

The vote on the protective tariff law of 1828 
furnished another illustration of the solidarity 
of the West. New England had abandoned 
her free trade position since 1824, and the 
North went strongly for the new tariff ; the 
Southern sea-coast states, except Louisiana, op- 
posed it bitterly ; and the bill was carried by the 
support of the Western States, both the free 
and the slave. This tariff bill was the first of 
the immediate irritating causes which induced 
South Carolina to go into the nullification move- 
ment. Benton's attitude on the measure was 
that of a good many other men who, in their 
public capacities, are obliged to appear as pro- 
tectionists, but who lack his frankness in stat- 
ing their reasons. He utterly disbelieved in 
and was opposed to the principle of the bill, but 



EARLY YEARS IN THE SENATE. 67 

as it had bid for and secured the interest of 
Missouri by a heavy duty on lead, he felt him- 
self forced to support it ; and so he announced 
his position. He simply went with his state, 
precisely as did Webster, the latter, in follow- 
ing Massachusetts' change of front and sup- 
porting the tariff of 1828, turning a full and 
complete somersault. Neither the one nor the 
other was to blame. Free traders are apt to 
look at the tariff from a sentimental stand-point ; 
but it is in reality purely a business matter, 
and should be decided solely on grounds of ex- 
pediency. Political economists have pretty 
generally agreed that protection is vicious in 
theory and harmful in practice; but if the 
majority of the people in interest wish it, and 
it affects only themselves, there is no earthly 
reason why they should not be allowed to try 
the experiment to their hearts' content. The 
trouble is that it rarely does affect only them- 
selves; and in 1828 the evil was peculiarly 
aggravated on account of the unequal way in 
which the proposed law would affect different 
sections. It purported to benefit the rest of 
the country, but it undoubtedly worked real 
injury to the planter states, and there is small 
ground for wonder that the irritation over it in 
the region so affected should have been intense. 
During Adams's term Benton began his fight 



68 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

for disposing of the public lands to actual 
settlers at a small cost. It was a move of 
enormous importance to the whole West ; and 
Benton's long and sturdy contest for it, and for 
the right of preemption, entitle him to the 
greatest credit. He never gave up the struggle, 
although repulsed again and again, and at the 
best only partially successful ; for he had to en- 
counter much opposition, especially from the 
short-sighted selfishness of many of the North- 
easterners, who wished to consider the public 
lands purely as sources of revenue. He utterly 
opposed the then existing system of selling land 
to the highest bidder — a most hurtful practice ; 
and objected to the establishment of an arbi- 
trary minimum price, which practically kept all 
land below a certain value out of the market 
altogether. He succeeded in establishing the 
preemption system, and had the system of rent- 
ing public mines, etc., abolished ; and he strug- 
gled for the principle of giving land outright to 
settlers in certain cases. As a whole, his theory 
of a liberal system of land distribution was un- 
doubtedly the correct one, and he deserves the 
greatest credit for having pushed it as he did. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ELECTION OF JACKSON, AND THE SPOILS 
SYSTEM. 

In the presidential election of 1828 Jackson 
and Adams were pitted against each other as 
the only candidates before the people, and Jack- 
son won an overwhelming victory. The fol- 
lowers of the two were fast developing respec- 
tively into Democrats and Whigs, and the 
parties were hardening and taking shape, while 
the dividing lines were being drawn more 
clearly and distinctly. But the contest was 
largely a personal one, and Jackson's success 
was due to his own immense popularity more 
than to any party principles which he was sup- 
posed to represent. Almost the entire strength 
of Adams was in the Northeast ; but it is abso- 
lutely wrong to assume, because of this fact, 
that the election even remotely foreshadowed 
the way in which party lines would be drawn in 
the coming sectional antagonism over slavery. 
Adams led Jackson in the two slave states of 
Maryland and Delaware ; and in the free states 
outside of New England Jackson had an even 



70 THOMAS II ART BENTON. 

greater lead over Adams. East of the Alie- 
ghanies it may here and there have been taken 
as in some sort a triumph of the South over the 
North ; but its sectional significance, as far as 
it had any, really came from its being a victory 
of the West over the East. Infinitely more 
important than this was the fact that it repre- 
sented the overwhelmingly successful upheaval 
of the most extreme democratic elements in the 
community. 

Until 1828 all the presidents, and indeed al- 
most all the men who took the lead in public 
life, alike in national and in state affairs, had 
been drawn from what in Europe would have 
been called the "upper classes." They were 
mainly college-bred men of high social standing, 
as well educated as any in the community, usu- 
ally rich or at least well-to-do. Their subordi- 
nates in office were of much the same material. 
It was believed, and the belief was acted upon, 
that public life needed an apprenticeship of 
training and experience. Many of our public 
men had been able ; almost all had been honor- 
able and upright. The change of parties in 
1800, when the JefTersonian Democracy came 
in, altered the policy of the government, but not 
the character of the officials. In that move- 
ment, though Jefferson had behind him the mass 
of the people as the rank and file of his party, 



THE ELECTION OF JACKSON. 71 

yet all his captains were still drawn from among 
the men in the same social position as himself. 
The Revolutionary War had been fought under 
the leadership of the colonial gentry ; and for 
years after it was over the people, as a whole, 
felt that their interests could be safely intrusted 
to and were identical with those of the descend- 
ants of their revolutionary leaders. The classes 
in which were to be found almost all the learn- 
ing, the talent, the business activity, and the 
inherited wealth and refinement of the country, 
had also hitherto contributed much to the body 
of its rulers. 

The Jacksonian Democracy stood for the re- 
volt against these rulers ; its leaders, as well as 
their followers, all came from the mass of the 
people. The majority of the voters supported 
Jackson because they felt he was one of them- 
selves, and because they understood that his 
election would mean the complete overthrow of 
the classes in power and their retirement from 
the control of the government. There was 
nothing to be said against the rulers of the day ; 
they had served the country and all its citizens 
well, and they were dismissed, not because the 
voters could truthfully allege any wrong-doing 
whatsoever against them, but solely because, in 
their purely private and personal feelings and 
habits of life, they were supposed to differ from 



72 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the mass of the people. This was such an out- 
rageously absurd feeling that the very men who 
were actuated by it, or who, like Benton, shaped 
and guided it, were ashamed to confess the true 
reason of their actions, and tried to cloak it be- 
hind an outcry, as vague and senseless as it was 
clamorous, against " aristocratic corruption " and 
other shadowy and spectral evils. Benton even 
talked loosely of " retrieving the country from 
the deplorable condition in which the enlight- 
ened classes had sunk it," although the country 
was perfectly prosperous and in its usual state 
of quiet, healthy growth. On the other hand, 
the opponents of Jackson indulged in talk al- 
most as wild, and fears even more extravagant 
than his supporters' hopes ; and the root of 
much of their opposition lay in a concealed but 
still existent caste antagonism to a man of Jack- 
son's birth and bringing up. In fact, neither 
side, in spite of all their loud talk of American 
Republicanism, had yet mastered enough of its 
true spirit to be able to see that so long as pub- 
lic officers did their whole duty to all classes 
alike, it was not in the least the affair of their 
constituents whether they chose to spend their 
hours of social relaxation in their shirt-sleeves 
or in dress coats. 

The change % was a great one ; it was not a 
change of the policy under which the govern* 



THE ELECTION OF JACKSON. 73 

ment was managed, as in Jefferson's triumph, 
but of the men who controlled it. The two 
great democratic victories had little in common ; 
almost as little as had the two great leaders un- 
der whose auspices they were respectively won, 
— and few men were ever more unlike than the 
scholarly, timid, and shifty doctrinaire, who sup- 
planted the elder Adams, and the ignorant, head- 
strong, and straightforward soldier, who was vic- 
tor over the younger. That the change was the 
deliberate choice of the great mass of the people, 
and that it was one for the worse, was then, 
and has been ever since, the opinion of most 
thinking men ; certainly the public service then 
took its first and greatest step in that downward 
career of progressive debasement and deteriora- 
tion which has only been checked in our own 
days. But those who would, off-hand, decry the 
democratic principle on this account would do 
well to look at the nearly contemporaneous 
career of the pet heroes of a trans- Atlantic 
aristocracy before passing judgment. A very 
charming English historian of our day l has com- 
pared Wellington with Washington ; it would 
have been far juster to have compared him 
with Andrew Jackson. Both were men of 
strong, narrow minds and bitter prejudices, with 
few statesmanlike qualities, who, for brilliant 

1 Justin McCarthy. 



74 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

military services, were raised to the highest civil 
positions in the gift of the state. The feeling 
among the aristocratic classes of Great Britain 
in favor of the Iron Duke was nearly as strong 
and quite as unreasonable as was the homage 
paid by their homelier kinsfolk across the At- 
lantic to Old Hickory. Wellington's military 
successes were far greater, for he had more 
chances ; but no single feat of his surpassed the 
remarkable victory won against his ablest lieu- 
tenant and choicest troops by a much smaller 
number of backwoods riflemen under Andrew 
Jackson. As a statesman Wellington may have 
done less harm than Jackson, for he had less in- 
fluence ; but he has no such great mark to his 
credit as the old Tennessean's attitude toward 
the Nullifiers. If Jackson's election is a proof 
that the majority is not always right, Welling- 
ton's elevation may be taken as showing that 
the minority, or a fraction thereof, is in its 
turn quite as likely to be wrong. 

This caste antagonism was the distinguishing 
feature in the election of 1828, and the partially 
sectional character of the contest was due to 
the different degree of development the caste 
spirit had reached in different portions of the 
Union. In New England wealth was quite 
evenly distributed, and education and intelli- 
gence were nearly universal ; so there the an- 



THE ELECTION OF JACKSON. 75 

tagonism was slight, the bulk of the New Eng- 
land vote being given, as usually before and 
since, in favor of the right candidate. In the 
Middle States, on the contrary, the antagonism 
was very strong. In the South it was of but 
little political account as between the whites 
themselves, they all being knit together by the 
barbarous bond of a common lordship of race; 
and here the feeling for Jackson was largely 
derived from the close kinship still felt for°the 
West. In the West itself, where Jackson's 
great strength lay, the people were still too 
much on the same plane of thought as well as of 
material prosperity, and the wealthy and culti- 
vated classes were of too limited extent to ad- 
mit of much caste feeling against the latter; 
and, accordingly, instead of hostility to them, the 
Western caste spirit took the form of hostility 
to their far more numerous representatives who 
had hitherto formed the bulk of the political 
rulers of the East. 

New England was not only the most ad- 
vanced portion of the Union, as regards intelli- 
gence, culture, and general prosperity, but was 
also most disagreeably aware of the fact, and 
was possessed with a self-conscious virtue that 
was peculiarly irritating to the Westerners, who 
knew that they were looked down' upon, and 
savagely resented it on every occasion ; and, be- 



76 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

sides, New England was apt to meddle in affairs 
that more nearly concerned other localities. 
Several of Benton's speeches, at this time, show 
this irritation against the Northeast, and also 
incidentally bring out the solidarity of interest 
felt throughout the West. In a long and able 
speech, favoring the repeal of the iniquitous 
"salt tax," or high duty on imported salt (a 
great hobby of his, in which, after many efforts, 
he was finally successful), he brought out the 
latter point very strongly, besides complaining 
of the disproportionate lightness of the burden 
imposed upon the Northeast by the high tariff, 
of which he announced himself to be but a 
moderate adherent. In common with all other 
Western statesmen, he resented keenly the 
suspicion with which the Northeast was then 
only too apt to regard the West, quoting in one 
of his speeches with angry resentment a prev- 
alent New England sneer at " the savages be- 
yond the Alleghanies." At the time we are 
speaking of it must be remembered that many 
even of the most advanced Easterners were 
utterly incapable of appreciating the almost 
limitless capacity of their country for growth 
and expansion, being in this respect far behind 
their Western brethren ; indeed, many regarded 
the acquisition of any new territory in the West 
with alarm and regret, as tending to make the 



THE ELECTION OF JACKSON. 77 

Union of such unwieldy size that it would break 
of its own weight. 

Benton was the leading opponent of a pro- 
posal, introduced by Senator Foot of Connecti- 
cut, to inquire into the expediency of limiting 
the sales of public lands to such lands as were 
then in the market. The limitation would have 
been most injurious to the entire West, which 
was thus menaced by the action of a New Eng- 
lander, while Benton appeared as the champion 
of the whole section, North and South alike, 
in the speech wherein he strenuously and, suc- 
cessfully opposed the adoption of the resolu- 
tion, and at the same time bitterly attacked 
the quarter of the country from which it came, 
as having from the earliest years opposed every- 
thing that might advance the interests of the 
people beyond the Alleghanies. Webster came 
to the assistance of the mover of the measure 
in a speech wherein, among other things, he 
claimed for the North the merit of the passage 
of the Ordinance of 1787, in relation to the 
Northwest Territory, and especially of the anti- 
slavery clause therein contained. But Benton 
here caught him tripping, and in a very good 
speech showed that he was completely mistaken 
in his facts. The debate now, however, com- 
pletely left the point at issue, taking a bitterly 
sectional turn, and giving rise to the famous 



78 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

controversy between Hayne, of South Carolina, 
who for the first time on the floor of the Sen- 
ate announced the doctrine of nullification, and 
Webster, who, in response to his antagonist, 
voiced the feeling of the Union men of the 
North in that wonderful and magnificent speech 
known ever since under the name of the " Re- 
ply to Hayne," and the calling forth of which 
will henceforward be Hayne's sole title to fame. 
Benton, though himself a strong Union and 
anti-nullification man, was still too excited over 
the subject-matter of the bill and the original 
discussion over it to understand that the debate 
had ranged off upon matters of infinitely greater 
importance, and entirely failed to realize that 
he had listened to the greatest piece of oratory 
of the century. On the contrary, encouraged 
by his success earlier in the debate, he actually 
attempted a kind of reply to Webster, attack- 
ing him with invective and sarcasm as an alarm- 
ist, and taunting him with the memory of the 
Hartford Convention, which had been held by 
members of the Federalist party, to which Web- 
ster himself had once belonged. Benton after- 
wards became convinced that Webster's views 
were by no means those of a mere alarmist, and 
frankly stated that he had been wrong in his 
position ; but at the time, heated by his original 
grievance, as a Western man, against New Eng- 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 79 

land, be failed entirely to understand the true 
drift of Hayne's speech. Much of New Eng- 
land's policy to the West was certainly exces- 
sively narrow-minded. 

Jackson's administration derives a most un- 
enviable notoriety as being the one under which 
the " spoils system " became, for the first time, 
grafted on the civil service of the nation ; ap- 
pointments and removals in the public service 
being made dependent upon political qualifica- 
tions, and not, as hitherto, upon merit or ca- 
pacity. Benton, to his honor, always stoutly 
opposed this system. It is unfair to assert that 
Jackson was the originator of this method of 
appointment; but he was certainly its foster- 
father, and more than any one else is responsi- 
ble for its introduction into the affairs of the 
national government. Despite all the Eastern 
sneers at the " savages " of the West, it was from 
Eastern men that this most effective method of 
debauching political life came. The Jacksonian 
Democrats of the West, when they introduced 
it into the working of the federal government, 
simply copied the system which they found al- 
ready firmly established by their Eastern allies 
in New York and Pennsylvania. For many 
years the course of politics throughout the 
country had been preparing and foreshadowing 
the advent of the " spoils system." The great- 



80 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

est single stroke in its favor had been done at 
the instigation of Crawford, when that schem- 
ing politician was seeking the presidency, and, 
to further his ends, he procured the passage by 
Congress of a law limiting the term of service 
of all public officials to four years, thus turn- 
ing out of office all the fifty thousand public 
servants during each presidential term. This 
law has never been repealed, every low politician 
being vitally interested in keeping it as it is, 
and accordingly it is to be found on the statute- 
books at the present day ; and though it has the 
company of some other very bad measures, it 
still remains very much the worst of all, as re- 
gards both the evil it has done and that which 
it is still doing. This four years' limitation law 
was passed without comment or protest, every 
one voting in its favor, its probable working not 
being comprehended in the least. Says Benton, 
who, with all his colleagues, voted for it : " The 
object of the law was to pass the disbursing 
officers every four years under the supervision 
of the appointing power, for the inspection of 
their accounts, in order that defaulters might 
be detected and dropped, while the faithful 
should be ascertained and continued. . . . It was 
found to operate contrary to its intent, and to 
have become the facile means of getting rid of 
faithful disbursing officers, instead of retaining 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 81 

them." New York has always had a low polit- 
ical standard, one or the other of its great party 
and factional organizations, and often both or 
all of them, being at all times most unlovely 
bodies of excessively unwholesome moral tone. 
Aaron Burr introduced the " spoils system " 
into her state affairs, and his methods were fol- 
lowed and improved upon by Marcy, Wright, 
Van Buren, and all the " Albany Regency." In 
1829 these men found themselves an important 
constituent portion of the winning party, and 
immediately, by the help of the only too will- 
ing Jackson, proceeded to apply their system to 
affairs at Washington. It was about this time 
that, in the course of a debate in the Senate, 
Marcy gave utterance to the now notorious 
maxim, " To the victors belong the spoils." 

Under Adams the non-partisan character of 
the public service had been guarded with a 
scrupulous care that could almost be called ex- 
aggerated. Indeed, Adams certainly went alto- 
gether too far in his non-partisanship when it 
came to appointing cabinet and other high of- 
ficers, his views on such points being not only 
fantastic, but absolutely wrong. The colorless 
character of his administration was largely due 
to his having, in his anxiety to avoid blind and 
unreasoning adherence to party, committed the 
only less serious fault of paying too little heed to 



82 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

party ; for a healthy party spirit is prerequisite 
to the performance of effective work in American 
political life. Adams was not elected purely 
for himself, but also on account of the men and 
the principles that he was supposed to repre- 
sent ; and when he partly surrounded himself, 
with men of opposite principles, he just so far, 
though from the best of motives, betrayed his 
supporters, and rightly forfeited much of theii' 
confidence. But, under him, every public ser- 
vant felt that, so long as he faithfully served 
the state, his position was secure, no matter 
what his political opinions might be. 

With the incoming of the Jacksonians all 
this changed, and terribly for the worse. A 
perfect reign of terror ensued among the office- 
holders. In the first month of the new adminis- 
tration niore removals took place than during 
all the previous administrations put together. 
Appointments were made with little or no at- 
tention to fitness, or even honesty, but solely 
because of personal or political services. Re- 
movals were not made in accordance with any 
known rule at all ; the most frivolous pretexts 
were sufficient, if advanced by useful politicians 
who needed places already held by capable in- 
cumbents. Spying and tale -bearing became 
prominent features of official life, the meaner 
office-holders trying to save their own heads by 






THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 83 

denouncing others. The very best men were un- 
ceremoniously and causelessly dismissed; gray- 
headed clerks, who had been appointed by the 
earlier presidents, — by Washington, the elder 
Adams, and Jefferson, — being turned off at an 
hour's notice, although a quarter of a century's 
faithful work in the public service had unfitted 
them to earn their living elsewhere. Indeed, 
it was upon the best and most efficient men that 
the blow fell heaviest ; the spies, tale-bearers, 
and tricksters often retained their positions. 
In 1829 the public service was, as it always had 
been, administered purely in the interest of the 
people ; and the man who was styled the es- 
pecial champion of the people dealt that service 
the heaviest blow it has ever received. 

Benton himself always took a sound stand on 
the civil service question, although his partisan- 
ship led him at times to defend Jackson's course 
when he must have known well that it was in- 
defensible. He viewed with the greatest alarm 
and hostility the growth of the "spoils system," 
and early introduced, as chairman of a special 
committee, a bill to repeal the harmful four 
years' limitation act. In discussing this pro- 
posed bill afterwards, he wrote, in words that 
apply as much at this time as they did then : 
" The expiration of the four years' term came 
to be considered as the termination and vacation 



84 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

of all the offices on which it fell, and the crea- 
tion of vacancies to be filled at the option of the 
president. The bill to remedy this defect gave 
legal effect to the original intention of the law 
by confining the vacation of office to actual de- 
faulters. The power of the president to dis- 
miss civil officers was not attempted to be cur- 
tailed, but the restraints of responsibility were 
placed upon its exercise by requiring the cause 
of dismission to be communicated to Congress 
in each case. The section of the bill to that ef- 
fect was in these words: That in all nomina- 
tions made by the president to the Senate, to fill 
vacancies occasioned by an exercise of the presi- 
dents power to remove from office, the fact of the 
removal shall be stated to the Senate at the same 
time that the nomination is made, with a state- 
ment of the reasons for which such officer may 
have been removed. This was intended to oper- 
ate as a restraint upon removals without cause." 
In the " Thirty Years' View " he again writes, 
in language which would be appropriate from 
every advanced civil service reformer of the 
present day, that is, from every disinterested 
man who has studied the workings of the "spoils 
system " with any intelligence : — 

I consider " sweeping " removals, as now practiced 
by both parties, a great political evil in our country, 
injurious to individuals, to the public service, to the 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 85 

purity of elections, and to the harmony and union of 
the people. Certainly no individual has a right to 
an office ; no one has an estate or property in a public 
employment ; but when a mere ministerial worker in 
a subordinate station has learned its duties by ex- 
perience and approved his fidelity by his conduct, it 
is an injury to the public service to exchange him for 
a novice whose only title to the place may be a po- 
litical badge or partisan service. It is exchanging 
experience for inexperience, tried ability for untried, 
and destroying the incentive to good conduct by de- 
stroying its reward. To the party displaced it is an 
injury, he having become a proficient in that busi- 
ness, expecting to remain in it during good behavior, 
and finding it difficult, at an advanced age, and with 
fixed habits, to begin a new career in some new walk 
of life. It converts elections into scrambles for of- 
fice, and degrades the government into an office for 
rewards and punishments ; and divides the people of 
the Union into two adverse parties, each in its turn, 
and as it becomes dominant, to strip and proscribe 
the other. 

Benton had now taken the position which he 
was for many years to hold, as the recognized 
senatorial leader of a great and well-defined 
party. Until 1828 the prominent political 
chiefs of the nation had either been its presi- 
dents, or had been in the cabinets of these presi- 
dents. But after Jackson's time they were in 



86 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the Senate, and it was on tins body that public 
attention was concentrated. Jackson's cabinet 
itself showed such a falling off, when compared 
with the cabinets of any of his predecessors, as 
to justify the caustic criticism that, when he 
took office, there came in " the millennium of 
the minnows." In the Senate, on the contrary, 
there were never before or since so many men 
of commanding intellect and powers. Calhoun 
had been elected as vice-president on the Jack- 
sonian ticket, and was thus, in 1829, presiding 
over the body of which he soon became an act- 
ive member; Webster and Clay were already 
taking their positions as the leaders of the great 
National Republican, or, as it was afterwards 
called, Whig party. 

When the rupture between Calhoun and the 
Jacksonian Democrats, and the resignation of 
the former from the vice-presidency took place, 
three parties developed in the United States 
Senate. One was composed of the Jacksonian 
Democrats, with Benton at their head ; one was 
made up of the little band of Nullifiers, led by 
Calhoun ; and the third included the rather loose 
array of the Whigs, under Clay and Webster. 
The feeling of the Jacksonians towards Cal- 
houn and the Nullifiers and towards Clay and 
the Clay Whigs were largely those of persona] 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 87 

animosity ; but they had very little of this sen- 
timent towards Webster and his associates, 
their differences with them being on questions 
of party principle, or else proceeding from 
merely sectional causes. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 

During both Jackson's presidential terms he 
and his adherents were engaged in two great 
struggles ; that with the Nullifiers, and that 
with the Bank. Although these struggles were 
in part synchronous, it will be easier to discuss 
each by itself. 

The nullification movement in South Caro- 
lina, during the latter part of the third and 
early part of the fourth decades in the present 
century, had nothing to do, except in the most 
distant way, with slavery. Its immediate cause 
was the high tariff ; remotely it sprang from 
the same feelings which produced the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions of 1798. 

Certain of the Slave States, including those 
which raised hemp, indigo, and sugar, were high- 
tariff states ; indeed, it was not till towards the 
close of the presidency of Monroe that there 
had been much sectional feeling over the policy 
of protection. Originally, while we were a 
purely agricultural and mercantile people, free 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIF1ERS. 89 

trade was the only economic policy which oc- 
curred to us as possible to be followed, the first 
tariff bill being passed in 1816. South Carolina 
then was inclined to favor the system, Calhoun 
himself supporting the bill, and, his subsequent 
denials to the contrary notwithstanding, dis- 
tinctly advocating the policy of protection to 
native industries ; while Massachusetts then and 
afterwards stoutly opposed its introduction, as 
hostile to her interests. However, the bill was 
passed, and Massachusetts had to submit to its 
operation. After 1816 new tariff laws were 
enacted about every four years, and soon the 
coast Slave States, except Louisiana, realized 
that their working was hurtful to the interests 
of the planters. New England also changed 
her attitude ; and when the protective tariff bill 
of 1828 came up, its opponents and supporters 
were sharply divided by sectional lines. But 
these lines were not such as would have divided 
the states on the question of slavery. The 
Northeast and Northwest alike favored the 
measure, as also did all the Southern States 
west of the Alleghanies, and Louisiana. It was 
therefore passed by an overwhelming vote, 
against the solid opposition of the belt of South- 
ern coast states stretching from Virginia to 
Mississippi, and including these two. 

The states that felt themselves harmed by 



90 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the tariff did something more than record their 
disapproval by the votes of their representatives 
in Congress. They nearly all, through their 
legislatures, entered emphatic protests against 
its adoption, as being most harmful to them and 
dangerous to the Union ; and some accompanied 
their protests with threats as to what would be 
done if the obnoxious laws should be enforced. 
They certainly had grounds for discontent. In 
1828 the tariff, whether it benefited the coun- 
try as a whole or not, unquestionably harmed 
the South ; and in a federal Union it is most 
unwise to pass laws which shall benefit one part 
of the community to the hurt of another part, 
when the latter receives no compensation. The 
truculent and unyielding attitude of the ex- 
treme protectionists was irritating in the ex- 
treme ; for cooler men than the South Carolin- 
ians might well have been exasperated at such 
an utterance as that of Henry Clay, when he 
stated that for the sake of the " American sys- 
tem " — by which title he was fond of styling a 
doctrine already ancient in mediaeval times — he 
would " defy the South, the president and the 
devil." 

On the other hand, both the good and the 
evil effects of the tariff were greatly exagger- 
ated. Some harm to the planter states was 
doubtless caused by it ; but their falling back, 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 91 

as compared with the North, in the race for pros- 
perity, was doubtless caused much more by the 
presence of slavey, as Dallas, of Pennsylvania, 
pointed out in the course of some very temper- 
ate and moderate remarks in the Senate. Clay's 
assertions as to what the tariff had done for 
the West were equally ill-founded, as Benton 
showed in a good speech, wherein he described 
picturesquely enough the industries and gen- 
eral condition of his portion of the country, and 
asserted with truth that its revived prosperity 
was due to its own resources, entirely indepen- 
dent of federal aid or legislation. He said : " I 
do not think we are indebted to the high tariff 
for our fertile lands and our navigable rivers ; 
and I am certain we are indebted to these bless- 
ings for the prosperity we enjoy." " In all that 
comes from the soil the people of the West are 
rich. They have an abundant supply of food, 
for man and beast, and a large surplus to send 
abroad. They have the comfortable living 
which industry creates for itself in a rich soil, 
but beyond this they are poor . . .They have no 
roads paved or macadamized ; no canals or 
aqueducts ; no bridges of stone across the in- 
numerable streams ; no edifices dedicated to 
eternity ; no schools for the fine arts ; ruot a 
public library for which an ordinary scholar 
would not apologize." Then he went on to 



92 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

speak of the commerce of the West and its 
exports, "the marching myriads of living ani- 
mals annually taking their departure from the 
heart of the West, defiling through the gorges 
of the Cumberland, the Alleghany, and the 
Appalachian mountains, or traversing the plains 
of the South, diverging as they march, . . . and 
the flying steamboats and the fleets of floating 
arks, loaded with the products of the forest, 
the farm, and the pasture, following the courses 
of our. noble rivers, and bearing their freights 
to the great city " of New Orleans. 

Unfortunately Benton would interlard even 
his best speeches with theories of economics 
often more or less crude, and, still worse, with 
a series of classic quotations and allusions ; for 
he was grievously afflicted with the rage for 
cheap pseudo-classicism that Jefferson and his 
school had borrowed from the French revolu- 
tionists. Nor could he resist the temptation to 
drag in allusions to some favorite hobby. The 
repeal of the salt-tax was an especial favorite 
of his. Pie was perfectly right in attacking 
the tax, and deserves the greatest credit for 
the persistency which finally won him the vic- 
tory. But his associates, unless of a humor- 
ous turn of mind, must have found his allusions 
to it rather tiresome, as when, apropos of the 
commerce of the Mississippi, and without any 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 93 

possible excuse for speaking of the iniquity of 
taxing salt, he suddenly alluded to New Or- 
leans as " that great city which revives upon 
the banks of the Mississippi the name of the 
greatest of the emperors 1 that ever reigned 
upon the banks of the Tiber, and who eclipsed 
the glory of his own heroic exploits by giving 
an order to his legions never to levy a contri- 
bution of salt upon a Roman citizen I" 

It must be admitted that the tariff did some 
harm to the South, and that it was natural for 
the latter to feel resentment at the way in 
which it worked. But it must also be re- 
membered that no law can be passed which 
does not distribute its benefits more or less 
unequally, and which does not, in all proba- 
bility, work harm in some cases. Moreover, 
the South was estopped from complaining of 
one section being harmed by a law that bene r 
fited, or was supposed to benefit, the country at 
large, by her position in regard to the famous 
embargo and non-intervention acts. These in- 
flicted infinitely more damage and loss in New 
England than any tariff law could inflict on 
South Carolina, and, moreover, were put into 
execution on account of a quarrel with Eng- 
land forced on by the West and South contrary 
to the desire of the East. Yet the Southern- 
1 Aurelian. 



9-4 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

ers were fierce in their denunciations of such 
of the Federalists as went to the extreme in 
opposition to them. Even in 1816 Massachu- 
setts had been obliged to submit with good 
grace to the workings of a tariff which she 
deemed hostile to her interests, and which many 
Southerners then advocated. Certainly, even if 
the new tariff laws were ill-advised, unjust, and 
unequal in their working, yet they did not, in 
the most remote degree, justify any effort to 
break up the Union ; especially the South had 
no business to complain when she herself had 
joined in laying heavier burdens on the shoul- 
ders of New England. 

Complain she did, however ; and soon added 
threats to complaints, and was evidently ready 
to add acts to threats. Georgia, at first, took 
the lead in denunciation ; but South Carolina 
soon surpassed her, and finally went to the 
length of advocating and preparing for separa- 
tion from the Union ; a step that produced a 
revulsion of feeling even among her fellow anti- 
tariff states. The South Carolinian statesmen 
now proclaimed the doctrine of nullification, — 
that is, proclaimed that if any state deemed a 
federal law improper, it could proceed to de* 
clare that law null and void so far as its own 
territory was concerned, — and, as a corollary, 
that it had the right forcibly to prevent execu- 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 95 

tion of this void law within its borders. This 
was proclaimed, not as an exercise of the right 
of revolution, which, in the last resort, belongs, 
of course, to every community and class, but as 
a constitutional privilege. Jefferson was quoted 
as the father of the idea, and the Kentucky 
resolutions of 1798-99, which he drew, were 
cited as the precedent for the South Caroli- 
nian action. In both these last assertions 
the Nulli tiers were correct. Jefferson was v ;he 
father of nullification, and therefore of seces- 
sion. He used the word " nullify " in the orig- 
inal draft which he supplied to the Kentucky 
legislature, and though that body struck it out 
of the resolutions which they passed in 1798, 
they inserted it in those of the following year. 
This was done mainly as an unscrupulous party 
move on Jefferson's part, and when his side 
came into power he became a firm upholder 
the Union; and, being constitutionally ur 
to put a proper value on truthfulness, he 
denied that his resolutions could be cons 
to favor nullification — though they could 
possibility be construed to mean anything else. 
At this time it is not necessary to discuss 
nullification as a constitutional dogma ; V is an 
absurdity too great to demand serious (Muta- 
tion. The United States has the same right to 
protect itself from death by nullification seces- 



96 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

sion, or rebellion, that a man lias to protect 
himself from death by assassination. Calhoun's 
hair-splitting and metaphysical disquisitions on 
the constitutionality of nullification have now 
little more practical interest than have the ex- 
traordinary arguments and discussions of the 
schoolmen of the Middle Ages. 

But at the time they were of vital interest, 
for they were words which it was known South 
Carolina was prepared to back up by deeds. 
Calhoun was vice-president, the second officer 
in the federal government, and yet also the 
avowed leader of the most bitter disunionists. 
state supported him by an overwhelming 
majority, although even within its own borders 
there was an able opposition, headed by the 
at and loyal family of the Dray tons, — the 
family that afterwards furnished the cap- 
tain of Farragut's flag-ship, the glorious old 
5'Iartford. There was a strong sentiment in the 
Southern States in his favor; the public 
ith Carolina made speech after speech 
mi on to take even more advanced 
ud. \ 
w in ^igton the current at first seemed 

er "jo a tig in favor of the Nullifiers ; they 

a- ■ com ' on Jackson's support, as he was 
a Souther tad a states'-rights man. But he 
mg Unionist, and, moreover, at 



THE STRUGGLE WITH TEE NULLIFIERS. 97 

this time, felt very bitterly towards Calhoun, 
with whom he had just had a split, and had in 
consequence remodeled his cabinet, thrusting 
out all Calhoun's supporters, and adopting Van 
Buren as his political heir, — the position which 
it was hitherto supposed the great Carolina 
separatist occupied. 

The first man to take up the gauntlet the 
Nullifiers had thrown down was Webster, in his 
famous reply to Hayne. He, of course, voiced 
the sentiment of the Whigs, and especially of 
the Northeast, where the high tariff was re- 
garded with peculiar favor, where the Union 
feeling was strong, and where there was a cer- 
tain antagonism felt towards the South. The 
Jacksonian Democrats, whose strength lay in 
the West, had not yet spoken. They were, 
for the most part, neither ultra protectionists 
nor absolute free-traders ; Jackson's early r 
idential utterances had given offense io i 
South by not condemning all high ^riff legist 
tion, but at the same time had dcolared in favc 
of a much more mo^rr.to degree of prote( 
tion than suited the Whigs. Only a few week, 
after Webster's speech Jackson's chance car 
and he declared himself in unmistakable ter 
It was on the occasion of the Jefferson bi: 
day banquet, April 13, 1830. An effort was 
then being made to have Jefferson's birthday 



98 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

celebrated annually ; and the Nullifiers, rightly 
claiming him as their first and chief apostle, 
attempted to turn this particular feast into a 
demonstration in favor of nullification. Most 
of the speakers present were actively or pas- 
sively in favor of the movement, and the toasts 
proposed strongly savored of the new doctrine. 
But Jackson, Benton, and a number of other 
Union men were in attendance also, and when 
it came to Jackson's turn he electrified the au- 
dience by proposing : " Our federal Union ; it 
must be preserved." Calhoun at once answered 
with : " The Union ; next to our liberty the 
most dear ; may we all remember that it can 
only be preserved by respecting the rights of 
the states and distributing equally the benefit 
and burden of the Union." The issue between 
the president and the vice-president was now 
plete, and the Jacksonian Democracy was 
i aarei t/ T committed against nullification. Jack- 
ion had ^ - to the occasion as only a strong 
and a greaV r c. %x\ could rise, and his few, tell- 
ing words, finely ccr/tr acting at every point 
with Calhoun's utterances, rang throughout the 
r hole country, and will last as long as our gov- 
nment. One result, at least, the Nullifiers 
ccomplished, — they completely put an end to 
the Jefferson birthday celebrations. 

The South Carolinians had no intention of 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 99 

flinching from the contest which they had pro- 
voked, even when they saw that the North and 
West were united against them, and though 
the tide began to set the same way in their sis- 
ter states of the South; North Carolina, among 
the latter, being the first and most pronounced 
in her support of the president and denunci- 
ation of the Nnllifiers. The men of the Pal- 
metto State have always ranked high for hot- 
headed courage, and they soon showed that 
they had wills as fiery as that of Jackson him- 
self. Yet in the latter they had met an antag- 
onist well worthy of any foeman's steel. In 
declining an invitation to be present at Charles- 
ton, on July 4, 1831, the president again defined 
most clearly his position in favor of the Union, 
and his words had an especial significance be- 
cause he let it be seen that he was fully deter- 
mined to back them up by force if necessary. 
But his letter only had the effect of inflaming 
still more the minds of the South Carolinians. 
The prime cause of irritation, the tariff, still 
remained ; and in 1832, Clay, having entered 
the Senate after a long retirement from poli- 
tics, put the finishing stroke to their anger by 
procuring the passage of a new tariff bill, which 
left the planter states almost as badly off as did 
the law of 1828. Jackson signed this, although 
not believing that it went far enough in the 
reduction of duties. 



100 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

In the presidential election of 1832, Jackson 
defeated Clay by an enormous majority ; Van 
Buren was elected vice-president, there being 
thus a Northern man on the ticket. South 
Carolina declined to take part in the election, 
throwing away her vote. Again, it must be 
kept in mind that the slave question did not 
shape, or, indeed, enter into this contest at all, 
directly, although beginning to be present in 
the background as a source of irritation. In 
1832 there was ten-fold more feeling in the 
North against Masonry, and secret societies 
generally, than there was against slavery. 

Benton threw himself in, heart and soul, with 
the Union party, acting as Jackson's right-hand 
man throughout the contest with South Caro- 
lina, and showing an even more resolute and un- 
flinching front than Old Hickory himself. No 
better or trustier ally than the Missouri states- 
man, in a hard fight for a principle, could be 
desired. He was intensely national in all his 
habits of thought ; he took a deep, personal 
pride in all his country, — North, South, East, 
and West. He had been very loath to believe 
that any movement hostile to the Union was 
really on foot ; but once thoroughly convinced 
of it he chose his own line of action without an 
instant's hesitation. 

A fortnight after the presidential election 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIF1ERS. 101 

South Carolina passed her ordinance of nullifi- 
cation, directed against the tariff laws generally, 
and against those of 1828 and 1832 in particu- 
lar. The ordinance was to take effect on Feb- 
ruary 1st; and if meantime the federal govern- 
ment should make any attempt to enforce the 
laws, the fact of such attempt was to end the 
continuance of South Carolina in the Union. 

Jackson promptly issued a proclamation 
against nullification, composed jointly by him- 
self and the great Louisiana jurist and states- 
man, Livingston. It is one of the ablest, as 
well as one of the most important, of all Amer- 
ican state papers. It is hard to see how any 
American can read it now without feeling his 
veins thrill. Some claim it as being mainly the 
work of Jackson, others as that of Livingston ; 
it is great honor for either to have had a hand 
in its production. 

In his annual message the president merely 
referred, in passing, to the Nullifiers, expressing 
his opinion that the action in reducing the du- 
ties, which the extinction of the public debt 
would permit and require, would put an end to 
the proceedings. As matters grew more threat- 
ening, however, South Carolina making every 
preparation for war and apparently not being 
conciliated in the least by the evident desire in 
Congress to meet her more than half-way on 



102 TIIOMAS HART BENTON. 

the tariff question, Jackson sent a special mes- 
sage to both houses. He had already sent Gen- 
eral Scott to Charleston, and had begun the 
concentration of certain military and naval 
forces in or near the state boundaries. He now 
asked Congress to pass a measure to enable him 
to deal better with possible resistance to the 
laws. South Carolina having complained of the 
oppressed condition in which she found herself, 
owing to the working of the tariff, Jackson, in 
his message, with some humor, quoted in reply 
the last Thanksgiving proclamation of her gov- 
ernor, wherein he dilated upon the state's un- 
exampled prosperity and happiness. 

It must alwaj^s be kept in mind in describ- 
ing the attitude of the Jacksonian Democrats 
towards the Nullifiers that they were all along, 
especially in the West, hostile to a very high 
tariff. Jackson and Benton had always favored 
a much lower tariff than that established in 
1828 and hardly changed in 1832. It was no 
change of front on their part now to advocate a 
reduction of duties. Jackson and Benton both 
felt that there was much ground for South Car- 
olina's original complaint, although as strongly 
opposed to her nullification attitude as any 
Northerner. Most of the Southern senators and 
representatives, though opposed to nullification, 
were almost equally hostile to the high tariff ; 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLTFIERS. 103 

and very many others were at heart in sym- 
pathy with nullification itself. The intensely 
national and anti-separatist tone of Jackson's 
declaration, — a document that might well have 
come from Washington or Lincoln, and that 
would have reflected high honor on either, — 
though warmly approved by Benton, was very 
repugnant to many of the Southern Democrats, 
and was too much even for certain of the Whigs. 
In fact, it reads like the utterance of some great 
Federalist or Republican leader. The feeling 
in Congress, as a whole, was as strong against 
the tariff as it was against nullification ; and 
Jackson had to take this into account, all the 
more because not only was he in some degree 
of the same way of thinking, but also many of 
his followers entertained the sentiment even 
more earnestly. 

Calhoun introduced a series of nullification 
resolutions into the Senate, and defended them 
strongly in the prolonged constitutional debate 
that followed. South Carolina meanwhile put 
off the date at which her decrees were to take 
effect, so that she might see what Congress 
would do. Beyond question, Jackson's firm- 
ness, and the way in which he was backed up 
by Benton, Webster, and their followers, was 
having some effect. He had openly avowed his 
intention, if matters went too far, of hanging 



104 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Calhoun "higher than Hainan." He unques- 
tionably meant to imprison him, as well as the 
other South Carolina leaders, the instant that 
state came into actual collision with the Union ; 
and to the end of his life regretted, and with 
reason, that he had not done so without waiting 
for an overt act of resistance. Some historians 
have treated this as if it were an idle threat; 
but such it certainly was not. Jackson un- 
doubtedly fully meant what he said, and would 
have acted promptly had the provocation oc- 
curred, and, moreover, he would have been sus- 
tained by the country. He was not the man to 
weigh minutely what would and what would 
not fall just on one side or the other of the line 
defining treason ; nor was it the time for too 
scrupulous adherence to precise wording. Had 
a collision occurred, neither Calhoun nor his 
colleague would ever have been permitted to 
leave Washington ; and brave though they were, 
the fact unquestionably had much influence 
with them. 

Webster was now acting heartily with Ben- 
ton. He introduced a set of resolutions which 
showed that in the matters both of the tariff 
and of nullification his position was much the 
same as was that of the Missourian. Unfortu- 
nately Congress, as a whole, was by no means 
so stiff-kneed. A certain number of Whigs fol- 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 105 

lowed Webster, and a certain number of Demo- 
crats clung to Benton; but most Southerners 
were very reluctant to allow pressure to be 
brought to bear on South Carolina, and many- 
Northerners were as willing to compromise as 
Henry Clay himself. In accordance with Jack- 
son's recommendations two bills were intro- 
duced: one the so-called "Force bill," to allow 
the president to take steps to defend the federal 
authority in the event of actual collision ; and 
the other a moderate, and, on the whole, proper 
tariff bill, to reduce protective duties. Both 
were introduced by administration supporters. 
Benton and Webster warmly sustained the 
"Force bill," which was bitterly attacked by 
the Nullifiers and by most of the Southerners, 
who really hardly knew what stand to take, 
the leading opponent being Tyler of Virginia, 
whose disunion attitude was almost as clearly 
marked as that of Calhoun himself. The meas- 
ure was eminently just, and was precisely what 
the crisis demanded ; and the Senate finally 
passed it and sent it to the House. 

All this time an obstinate struggle was going 
on over the tariff bill. Calhoun and his sym- 
pathizers were beginning to see that there was 
real danger ahead, alike to themselves, their 
constituents, and their principles, if they fol- 
lowed unswervingly the course they had laid 



106 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

down ; and the weak-kneed brethren on the 
other side, headed by Clay, were becoming even 
more uneasy. Calhoun wished to avert collision 
with the federal government; Clay was quite as 
anxious to avoid an outbreak in the South and 
to save what he could of the protective system, 
which was evidently doomed. Calhoun was 
willing to sacrifice some of his constitutional 
theories in regard to protection ; Clay was 
ready greatly to reduce protection itself. Each 
of them, but especially Clay, was prepared to 
shift his stand somewhat from that of abstract 
moral right to that of expediency. Benton and 
Webster were too resolute and determined in 
their hostility to any form of yielding to South 
Carolina's insolent defiance to admit any hope 
of getting them to accept a compromise ; but 
the majority of the members were known to be 
only too ready to jump at any half-way measure 
which would patch up the affair for the present, 
no matter what the sacrifice of principle or how 
great the risk incurred for the future. Accord- 
ingly, Clay and Calhoun met and agreed on a 
curious bill, in reality recognizing the protective 
system, but making a great although gradual 
reduction of duties ; and Clay introduced this 
as a " compromise measure." It was substi- 
tuted in the House for the administration tariff 
bill, was passed and sent to the Senate. It 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIF1ERS. 107 

gave South Carolina much, but not all, that 
she demanded. Her representatives announced 
themselves satisfied, and supported it, together 
with all their Southern sympathizers. Webster 
and Benton fought it stoutly to the last, but it 
was passed by a great majority ; a few North- 
erners followed Webster, and Benton received 
fair support from his Missouri colleagues and 
the Maryland senators ; the other senators, 
Whigs and Democrats alike, voted for the 
measure. Many of the Southerners were im- 
bued with separatist principles, although not 
yet to the extent that Calhoun was ; others, 
though Union men, did not possess the unflinch- 
ing will and stern strength of character that 
enabled Benton to stand out against any sec- 
tion of the country, even his own, if it was 
wrong. Silas Wright, of New York, a typical 
Northern " dough-face " politician, gave exact 
expression to the " dough-face" sentiment, which 
induced Northern members to vote for the com- 
promise, when he stated that he was unalter- 
ably opposed to the principle of the bill, but 
that on account of the attitude of South Caro- 
lina, and of the extreme desire which he had to 
remove all cause of discontent in that state, and 
in order to enable her again to become an affec- 
tionate member of the Union, he would vote 
for what was satisfactory to her, although re- 



108 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

pugnant to himself. Wright, Marcy, and their 
successors in New York politics, almost up to 
the present day, certainly carried cringing sub- 
serviency to the South to a pitch that was fairly 
sublime. 

The " Force bill " and the compromise tariff 
bill passed both houses nearly simultaneously, 
and were sent up to the president, who signed 
both on the same day. His signing the com- 
promise bill was a piece of weakness out of 
keeping with his whole character, and espe- 
cially out of keeping with his previous course 
towards the Nullifiers. The position assumed 
by Benton and Webster, that South Carolina 
should be made to submit first and should have 
the justice of her claims examined into after- 
wards, was unquestionably the only proper atti- 
tude. 

Benton wrote : — 

My objections to this bill, and to its mode of being 
passed, were deep and abiding, and went far beyond 
its own obnoxious provisions, and all the transient 
and temporary considerations connected with it. . . . 
A compromise made with a state in arras is a capitula- 
tion to that state. . . . The injury was great then, and 
a permanent evil example. It remitted the govern- 
ment to the condition of the old confederation, acting 
upon sovereignties instead of individuals. It violated 
the feature of our Union which discriminated it from 



TEE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 109 

all confederacies that ever existed, and which was 
wisely and patriotically put into the Constitution to 
save it from the fate which had attended all con- 
federacies, ancient and modern. . . . The framers of 
our Constitution established a Union instead of a 
League — to be sovereign and independent within its 
sphere, acting upon persons through its own laws 
and courts, instead of acting on communities through 
persuasion or force. The effect of this compromise 
legislation was to destroy this great feature of our 
Union — to bring the general and state governments 
into conflict — and to substitute a sovereign state for 
an offending individual as often as a state chose to 
make the cause of that individual her own. 

Not only was Benton's interpretation of the 
Constitution sound, and one that by the course 
of events has now come to be universally ac- 
cepted, but his criticisms on the wisdom of the 
compromise bill were perfectly just. Had the 
Anti-Nullifiers stood firm, the Nullifiers would 
probably have given way, and if not, would 
certainly have been crushed. Against a solid 
North and West, with a divided South, even 
her own people not being unanimous, and with 
Jackson as chief executive, South Carolina 
could not have made even a respectable resist- 
ance. A salutary lesson then might very pos- 
sibly have saved infinite trouble and bloodshed 
thereafter. But in Jackson's case it must be 



110 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

remembered that, so far as his acts depended 
purely upon his own will and judgment, no 
fault can be found witli him ; he erred only in 
ratifying a compromise agreed to by the vast 
majority of the representatives of the people in 
both houses of Congress. 

The battle did not result in a decisive victory 
for either side. This was shown by the very 
fact that each party insisted that it had won a 
signal triumph. Calhoun and Clay afterwards 
quarreled in the senate chamber as to which 
had given up the more in the compromise. 
South Carolina had declared, first, that the 
tariff was unconstitutional, and therefore to be 
opposed upon principle ; second, that it worked 
injustice to her interests, and must be abol- 
ished forthwith ; thirdly, that, if it were not so 
abolished, she would assert her power to nullify 
a federal law, and, if necessary, would secede 
from the Union. When her representatives 
agreed to the compromise bill, they abandoned 
the first point ; the second was decided largely 
in her favor, though protection was not by any 
means entirely given up ; the third she was al- 
lowed to insist upon with impunity, although 
the other side, by passing the " Force bill," 
showed that in case matters did proceed to ex- 
tremities they were prepared to act upon the 
opposite conviction. Still, she gained most of 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. Ill 

that for which she contended, and the victory, 
as a whole, rested with her. Calhoun's pur- 
poses seem to have been, in the main, pure ; 
but few criminals have worked as much harm 
to their country as he did. The plea of good 
intentions is not one that can be allowed to 
have much weight in passing historical judg- 
ment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and 
distorted way of looking at things produced, or 
helped to produce, such incalculable evil ; there 
is a wide political applicability in the remark 
attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that 
he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot 
him on purpose, but that he would surely never 
forgive one who did so accidentally. 

Without doubt, the honors of the nullification 
dispute were borne off by Benton and Webster. 
The latter's reply to Hayne is, perhaps, the 
greatest single speech of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and he deserves the highest credit for the 
stubbornness with which he stood by his colors 
to the last. There never was any question of 
Webster's courage ; on the occasions when he 
changed front he was actuated by self-interest 
and ambition, not by timidity. Usually he 
appears as an advocate rather than an earnest 
believer in the cause he represents ; but when 
it came to be a question of the Union, he felt 
what he said with the whole strength of his 
mature. 



112 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

An even greater meed of praise attaches to 
Benton for the unswerving fidelity which he 
showed to the Union in this crisis. Webster 
was a high-tariff man, and was backed up by 
all the sectional antipathies of the Northeast in 
his opposition to the Nullifiers ; Benton, on the 
contrary, was a believer in a low tariff, or in 
one for revenue merely, and his sectional an- 
tipathies were the other way. Yet, even when 
deserted by his chief, and when he was opposed 
to every senator from south of the Potomac 
and the Ohio, he did not flinch for a moment 
from his attitude of aggressive loyalty to the 
national Union. He had a singularly strong 
and upright character; this country has never 
had a statesman more fearlessly true to his con- 
victions, when great questions were at stake, 
no matter what might be the cost to himself, 
or the pressure from outside, — even when, as 
happened later, his own state was against him. 
Intellectually he cannot for a moment be com- 
pared to the great Massachusetts senator ; but 
morally he towers much higher. 

Yet, while praising Jackson and Benton for 
their behavior towards South Carolina, we can- 
hot forget that but a couple of years previously 
they had not raised their voices even in the 
mildest rebuke of Georgia for conduct which, 
though not nearly so bad in degree as that of 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE NULLIFIERS. 113 

South Carolina, wac of much the same kind. 
Towards the close of Adams's term, Georgia 
had bid defiance to the mandates of the Su- 
preme Court, and proceeded to settle the In- 
dian question within her borders without re- 
gard to the authority of the United States, and 
these matters were still unsettled when Jack- 
son became president. Unfortunately he let his 
personal feelings bias him ; and, as he took the 
Western and Georgian view of the Indian ques- 
tion, and, moreover, hated the Supreme Court 
because it was largely Federalist in its compo- 
sition, he declined to interfere. David Crock- 
ett, himself a Union man and a nationalist to 
the back-bone, rated Jackson savagely, and with 
justice, for the inconsistency of his conduct in 
the two cases, accusing him of having, by his 
harmful leniency to Georgia, encouraged South 
Carolina to act as she did, and ridiculing him 
because, while he smiled at the deeds of the 
one state, when the like acts were done by the 
other, "he took up the rod of correction and 
shook it over her ' 
8 



CHAPTER VI. 

JACKSON AND BENTON MAKE WAR ON THE 
BANK. 

If the struggle with the Nullifiers showed 
Benton at his best, in the conflict with the 
Bank he exhibited certain qualities which 
hardly place him in so favorable a light. .Jack- 
son's attack upon the Bank was a move under- 
taken mainly on his own responsibility, and one 
which, at first, most of his prominent friends 
were alarmed to see him undertake. Benton 
alone supported him from the beginning. Cap- 
tain and lieutenant alike intensely appreciated 
the joy of battle; they cared for a fight because 
it was a fight, and the certainty of a struggle, 
such as would have daunted weaker or more 
timid men, simply offered to them an additional 
inducement to follow out the course they had 
planned. Benton's thorough-going support was 
invaluable to Jackson. The president sorety 
needed a friend in the Senate who would up- 
hold him through thick and thin, and who yet 
commanded the respect of all his opponents by 



WAR ON THE BANK. 115 

his strength, ability, and courage. To be sure, 
Benton's knowledge of financial economics was 
not always profound ; but, on the other hand, a 
thorough mastery of the laws of finance would 
have been, in this fight, a very serious disad- 
vantage to any champion of Jackson. 

The rights and wrongs of this matter have 
been worn threadbare in countless discussions. 
For much of the hostility of Jackson and Ben- 
ton towards the Bank, there were excellent 
grounds; but many of their actions were wholly 
indefensible and very harmful in their results 
to the country. An assault upon what Benton 
called " the money power " is apt to be popular 
in a democratic republic, partly on account of 
the vague fear with which the poorer and more 
ignorant voters regard a powerful institution, 
whose working they do not understand, and 
partly on account of the jealousy they feel to- 
wards those who are better off than themselves. 
When these feelings are appealed to by men 
who are intensely in earnest, and who are them- 
selves convinced of the justice and wisdom of 
their course, they become very formidable fac- 
tors in any political contest. 

The struggle first became important when 
the question of the re-charter of the Bank was 
raised, towards the end of Jackson's first term, 
the present charter still having three years to 



116 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

run. This charter had in it many grave faults ; 
and there might well be a question as to 
whether it should be renewed. The Bank it- 
self, beyond doubt, possessed enormous power ; 
too much power for its own or outsiders' good. 
Its president, Biddle, was a man of some abil- 
ity, but conceited to the last degree, untruthful, 
and to a certain extent unscrupulous in the use 
he made of the political influence of the great 
moneyed institution over which he presided. 
Some of the financial theories on which he 
managed the Bank were wrong ; yet, on the 
whole, it was well conducted, and under its care 
the monetary condition of the country was 
quiet and good, infinitely better than it had 
been before, or than, under the auspices of the 
Jacksonian Democracy, it afterwards became. 

The two great reasons for Jackson's success 
throughout his political career were to be found 
in the strength of the feeling in his favor among 
the poorer and least educated classes of voters, 
and in the ardent support given him by the low 
politicians, who, by playing on his prejudices 
and passions, moulded him to their wishes, and 
who organized and perfected in their own and 
his interests a great political machine, founded 
on the " spoils system " ; and both the Jackso- 
nian rank and file and the Jacksonian politi- 
cians soon agreed heartily in their opposition 



WAR ON TEE BANK. 117 

to the Bank. Jackson and Benton opposed it 
for the same reasons that the bulk of their fol- 
lowers did ; that is to say, partly from honest 
and ignorant prejudice and partly from a well- 
founded feeling of distrust as to some of its ac- 
tions. The mass of their fellow party-leaders 
and henchmen assailed it with the cry that it 
was exerting its influence to debauch politics, 
while at the same time they really sought to 
use it as a power in politics on their own side. 

Jackson, in his first annual message in 1829, 
had hinted that he was opposed to the re-char- 
ter of the Bank, then a question of the future 
and not to arise for four or five years. At the 
same time he had called in question the con- 
stitutionality and expediency of the Bank's 
existence, and had criticised as vicious its cur- 
rency system. The matter of constitutionality 
had been already decided by the Supreme Court, 
the proper tribunal, and was, and had been for 
years, an accepted fact ; it was an absurdity to 
call it in question. As regards the matter of 
expediency, certainly the Jacksonians failed 
signally to put anything better in its place. 
Yet it was undeniable that there were grave 
defects in the currency system. 

The president's message roused but little in- 
terest, and what little it did rouse was among 
the Bank's friends. At once these began to 



118 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

prepare the way for the re-charter by an active 
and extensive agitation in its favor. The main 
bank was at Philadelphia, but it had branches 
everywhere, and naturally each branch bank 
was a centre of opposition to the president's 
proposed policy. As the friends of the Bank 
were greatly interested, and as the matter did 
not immediately concern those who afterwards 
became its foes, the former, for the time, had it 
all their own way, and the drift of public opin- 
ion seemed to be strongly in its favor. 

Benton was almost the only public man of 
prominence who tried to stem this tide from 
the beginning. Jackson's own party associates 
were originally largely against him, and so he 
stood all the more in need of the vigorous 
support which he received from the Missouri 
senator. Indeed, it would be unfair in the mat- 
ter of the attack on the Bank to call Benton 
Jackson's follower ; he might with more pro- 
priety be called the leader in the assault, al- 
though of course he could accomplish little com- 
pared with what was done by the great popular 
idol. He had always been hostile to the Bank, 
largely as a matter of Jeffersonian tradition, 
and he had shown his hostility by resolutions 
introduced in the Senate before Jackson was 
elected president. 

Early in 1831 he asked leave to introduce a 



WAR ON THE BANK. 119 

resolution against the re-charter of the Bank ; 
his purpose being merely to give formal notice 
of war against it, and to attempt to stir up a 
current of feeling counter to that which then 
seemed to be generally prevailing in its favor. 
In his speech he carefully avoided laying stress 
upon any such abstract point as that of consti- 
tutionality, and dwelt instead upon the ques- 
tions that would affect the popular mind ; as- 
sailing the Bank "as having too much power 
over the people and the government, over busi- 
ness and politics, and as too much disposed to 
exercise that power to the prejudice of the free- 
dom and equality which should prevail in a 
republic, to be allowed to exist in our country." 
The force of such an argument in a popular 
election will be acknowledged by all practical 
politicians. But, although Benton probably 
believed what he said, or at any rate most of 
it, he certainly ought not to have opened the 
discussion of a great financial measure with 
a demagogic appeal to caste prejudices. He 
wished to substitute a gold currency in the place 
of the existing bank-notes, and was not dis- 
turbed at all as to how he would supply the 
place of the Bank, saying: "I am willing to 
see the charter expire, without providing any 
substitute for the present Bank. I am willing 
to see the currency of the federal government 



120 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

left to the hard money mentioned and intended 
in the Constitution ; . . . every species of paper 
might be left to the state authorities, unrecog- 
nized by the federal government ! " Of the 
beauties of such a system as the last the coun- 
try later on received practical demonstration. 
Some of his utterances, however, could be com- 
mended to the friends of greenbacks and of dis- 
honest money even at the present day, as when 
he says : " Gold and silver are the best currency 
for a republic ; it suits the men of middle prop- 
erty and the working people best ; and if I 
was going to establish a workingman's party it 
should be on the basis of hard money — a hard- 
money party against a paper party." The 
Bank was in Philadelphia; much of the e*fcock 
was held in the East, and a good deal was held 
abroad, which gave Benton a chance to play on 
sectional feelings, as follows : " To whom is all 
the power granted ? To a company of private 
individuals, many of them foreigners, and the 
mass of them residing in a remote and narrow 
corner of the Union, unconnected by any sym- 
pathy with the fertile regions of the Great Val- 
ley, in which the natural power of this Union 
— the power of numbers — will be found to re- 
side long before the renewed term of a second 
charter would expire." Among the other sen- 
tences occurs the following bit of pure dema« 



WAR ON THE BANK. 121 

gogic pyrotechnics : " It [the Bank] tends to 
aggravate the inequality of fortunes ; to make 
the rich richer and the poor poorer ; to multi- 
ply nabobs and paupers ; and to deepen and 
widen the gulf which separates Dives from 
Lazarus. A great moneyed power is favorable 
to great capitalists, for it is the principle of 
money to favor money. It is unfavorable to 
small capitalists, for it is the principle of money 
to eschew the needy and unfortunate. It is in- 
jurious to the laboring classes." Altogether it 
was not a speech to be proud of. The Senate 
refused permission to introduce the resolution 
by the close vote of twenty-three to twenty. 

Benton lived only a generation after that one 
which had itself experienced oppression from a 
king, from an aristocratic legislature and from 
a foreign power ; and so his rant about the 
undue influence of foreigners in our govern- 
mental affairs, and his declamation over the 
purely supposititious powers that were presumed 
to be conspiring against the welfare of the 
poorer classes probably more nearly expressed 
his real feelings than would be the case with 
the similar utterances of any leading statesman 
nowadays. He was an enthusiastic believer in 
the extreme Jeffersonian doctrinaire views as 
to the will of the majority being always right, 
and as to the moral perfection of the average 



122 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

voter. Like his fellow-statesmen he failed to 
see the curious absurdity of supporting black 
slavery, and yet claiming universal suffrage for 
whites as a divine right, not as a mere matter 
of expediency resulting on the whole better 
than any other method. He had not learned 
that the majority in a democracy has no more 
right to tyrannize over a minority than, under 
a different system, the latter would have to op- 
press the former ; and that, if there is a moral 
principle at stake, the saying that the voice of 
the people is the voice of God may be quite as 
untrue, and do quite as much mischief, as the 
old theory of the divine right of kings. The 
distinguishing feature of our American govern- 
mental system is the freedom of the individual ; 
it is quite as important to prevent his being 
oppressed by many men as it is to save him 
from the tyranny of one. 

This speech on the re-charter showed a great 
deal of wide reading and much information ; 
but a good part of it was sheer declamation, in 
the turgid, pompous style that Benton, as well 
as a great many other American public speak- 
ers, was apt to mistake for genuine oratory. 
His subsequent speech on the currency, how- 
ever, was much better. This was likewise deliv- 
ered on the occasion of asking leave to present 
a joint resolution, which leave was refused. 



WAR ON THE BANK. 123 

The branch draft system was the object of the 
assault. These branch drafts were for even 
sums of small denomination, circulating like 
bank-notes ; they were drawn on the parent 
bank at Philadelphia to the order of some offi- 
cer of the branch bank and were indorsed by 
the latter to bearer. Thus paper was issued at 
one place which was payable at another and a 
distant place ; and among other results there 
ensued a constant inflation of credit. They were 
very mischievous in their workings ; they had 
none of the marks of convertible bank-notes or 
money, and so long as credit was active there 
could be no check on the inflation of the cur- 
rency by them. Payment could be voluntarily 
made at the branch banks whence issued, but if 
it was refused the owner had only the right to 
go to Philadelphia and sue the directors there. 
Most of these drafts were issued at the most 
remote and inaccessible branches, the payment 
of them being, therefore, much delayed by dis- 
tance and difficulty ; nor were the directors lia- 
ble for excessive issues. They constituted the 
bulk of all the paper seen in circulation ; they 
were supposed to be equivalent to money, but 
being bills of exchange they were merely nego- 
tiable instruments ; they did not have the prop- 
erties of bank-notes, which are constantly and 
directly interchangeable with money. In their 



124 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

issue Biddle had laid himself open to attack; 
and in defending them he certainly did not 
always speak the truth, willfully concealing or 
coloring facts. Moreover, his self-satisfaction 
and the foolish pride in his own power, which 
he could not conceal, led him into making 
imprudent boasts as to the great power the 
Bank could exercise over other local banks, and 
over the general prosperity of the country, while 
dilating upon its good conduct in not using 
this power to the disadvantage of the public. 
All this was playing into Benton's hands. He 
showed some of the evils of the branch draft 
system, although apparently not seeing others 
that were quite as important. He attacked the 
Bank for some real and many imaginary wrong- 
doings ; and quoted Biddle himself as an author- 
ity for the existence of powers dangerous to the 
welfare of the state. 

The advocates of the Bank were still in the 
majority in both houses of Congress, and soon 
began preparations for pushing through a bill 
for the re-charter. The issue began to become 
political. Webster, Clay, and most of the other 
anti-administration men were for the Bank; and 
so when the convention of the National Repub- 
licans, who soon afterwards definitely assumed 
the name of Whigs, took place, they declared 
heartily in its favor, and nominated for the 



WAR ON TEE BANK. 125 

presidency its most enthusiastic supporter, 
Henry Cla}'. The Bank itself unquestionably 
preferred not to be dragged into politics ; but 
Clay, thinking he saw a chance for a successful 
stroke, fastened upon it, and the convention 
that nominated him made the fight against 
Jackson on the ground that he was hostile to 
the Bank. Even had this not already been the 
case no more certain method of insuring his 
hostility could have been adopted. 

Still, however, many of Jackson's supporters 
were also advocates of re-charter ; and the bill 
for that purpose commanded the majority in 
Congress. Benton took the lead in organizing 
the opposition, not with the hope of preventing 
its passage, but " to attack incessantly, assail at 
all points, display the evil of the institution, 
rouse the people, and prepare them to sustain 
the veto." In other words, he was preparing 
for an appeal to the people, and working to 
secure an anti-Bank majority in the next Con- 
gress. He instigated and prepared the investi- 
gation into the affairs of the Bank, which was 
made in the House, and he led the harassing par- 
liamentary warfare carried on against the re- 
chartering bill in the Senate. He himself seems 
to have superintended the preparation of the 
charges which were investigated by the House- 
A great flurry was made over them, Benton and 



12G THOMAS HART BENTON. 

all his friends claiming that they were fully 
substantiated ; but the only real point scored 
was that against the branch drafts. Benton, 
with the majority of the committee of investi- 
gation, had the loosest ideas as to what a bank 
ought to do, loud though they were in denunci- 
ation of what this particular Bank was alleged 
to have done. 

Webster made the great argument in favor 
of the re-charter bill. Benton took the lead in 
opposition, stating, what was probably true, — 
that the bill was brought up so long before the 
charter expired for political reasons, and criti- 
cising it as premature ; a criticism unfortunately 
applicable with even greater force to Jackson's 
message. His speech was largely mere talking 
against time, and he wandered widely from the 
subject. Among other things he invoked the 
aid of the principle of states'-rights, because the 
Bank then had power to establish branches in 
any state, whether the latter liked it or not, and 
free from state taxation. He also appealed to 
the Western members as such, insisting that the 
Bank discriminated against their section of the 
country in favor of the East ; the facts being 
that the shrewdness and commercial morality 
of the Northeast, particularly of New England, 
saved them from the evils brought on the West- 
erners by the foolishness with which they abused 



WAR ON THE BANK. 127 

their credit and the laxness with which they 
looked on monetary obligations. But in spite 
of all that Benton could do the bill passed both 
houses, the Senate voting in its favor by twenty- 
eight ayes against twenty nays. 

Jackson, who never feared anything, and was 
more than ready to accept the fight which was 
in some measure forced on him, yet which in 
some degree he had courted, promptly vetoed 
the bill in a message which stated some truths 
forcibly and fearlessly, which developed some 
very queer constitutional and financial theories, 
and which contained a number of absurdities, 
evidently put in, not for the benefit of the Sen- 
ate, but to influence voters at the coming presi- 
dential election. The leaders of the opposition 
felt obliged to make a show of trying to pass 
the bill over the veto in order to get a chance 
to answer Jackson. Webster again opened the 
argument. Clay made the fiercest onslaught, 
assailing the president personally, besides at- 
tacking the veto power, and trying to discredit 
its use. But the presidential power of veto is 
among the best features of our government, 
and Benton had no difficulty in making a good 
defense of it ; although many of the arguments 
adduced by him in its favor were entirely un- 
sound, being based on the wholly groundless 
assumption that the function of the president 



123 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

corresponded to that of the ancient Roman 
tribune of the people, and was supposed to be 
exercised in the interests of the people to con- 
trol the legislature — thus willfully overlooking 
the fact that the legislature also was elected 
by the people. When on his ultra-democratic 
hobby Benton always rode very loose in the 
saddle, and with little knowledge of where he 
was going. Clay and Benton alike drew all 
sorts of analogies between the state of affairs in 
the United States and that formerly prevailing 
in France, England, and above all in the much- 
suffering republics of antiquity. Benton insisted 
that the Bank had wickedly persuaded the West 
to get in debt to it so as to have that section 
in its power, and that the Western debt had 
been created with a view to political engineer- 
ing ; the fact being that the Westerners had run 
into debt purely by their own fault, and that 
the Bank itself was seriously alarmed at the 
condition of its Western branches. The cur- 
rency being in much worse shape in the West 
than in the Northeast, gold and silver naturally 
moved towards the latter place ; and this result 
of their own shortcomings was again held up as 
a grievance of the Westerners against the Bank. 
He also read a severe lecture on the interests 
of party discipline to the Democrats who had 
voted for the re-charter, assuring them that they 



WAR ON THE BANK. 129 

could not continue to be both for the Bank and 
for Jackson. The Jacksonian Democracy, nom- 
inally the party of the multitude, was in reality 
the nearest approach the United States has ever 
seen to the " one man power ; " and to break 
with Jackson was to break with the Demo- 
cratic party. The alternative of expulsion or 
of turning a somersault being thus plainly pre- 
sented to the recalcitrant members, they for 
the most part chose the latter, and performed 
the required feat of legislative acrobatics with 
the most unobtrusive and submissive meekness. 
The debate concluded with a sharp and undig- 
nified interchange of personalities between the 
Missouri and Kentucky senators, Clay giving 
Benton the lie direct, and the latter retorting 
in kind. Each side, of course, predicted the 
utter ruin of the country, if the other prevailed. 
Benton said that, if the Bank conquered, the 
result would be the establishment of an oli- 
garchy, and then of a monarchy, and finally the 
death of the Republic by corruption. Webster 
stated as his belief that, if the sentiments of 
the veto message received general approbation, 
the Constitution could not possibly survive its 
fiftieth year. Webster, however, in that debate, 
showed to good advantage. Benton was no 
match for him, either as a thinker or as a 
speaker ; but with the real leader of the Whig 



130 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

party, Henry Clay, he never bad much cause 
to fear comparison. 

All the state banks were of course rabidly in 
favor of Jackson ; and the presidential election 
of 1832 was largely fought on the bank issue. 
In Pennsylvania, however, the feeling for the 
Bank was only less strong than that for Jack- 
son ; and accordingly that Boeotian community 
sapiently cast its electoral votes for the latter, 
while instructing its senators and representa- 
tives to support the former. But the complete 
and hopeless defeat of Clay by Jackson sealed 
the fate of the Bank. Jackson was not even 
content to let it die naturally by the lapse of 
its charter. His attitude towards it so far had 
been one for which much could be said ; indeed, 
very good grounds can be shown for thinking 
his veto proper. But of the impropriety of his 
next step there could be no possible question. 
Congress had passed a resolution declaring its 
belief in the safety of the United States depos- 
its in the Bank ; but the president, in the sum- 
mer of 1833, removed these deposits and placed 
them in certain state banks. He experienced 
some difficulty in getting a secretary of the 
treasury who would take such a step; finally 
he found one in Taney. 

Tha Bank memorialized Congress at once ; 
and the anti-administration majority in the Sen. 



WAR ON THE BANK. 131 

ate forthwith took up the quarrel. They first 
rejected Jackson's nominations for bank direc- 
tors, and then refused to confirm Taney him- 
self. Two years later Jackson made the latter 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, in which 
position he lived to do even more mischief than 
he had time or opportunity to accomplish as 
secretary of the treasury. 

Benton was the administration champion in 
the Senate. Opposed to him were Webster and 
Clay, as leaders of the Whigs, supported for 
the time being by Calhoun. The feeling of 
Clay and Calhoun against the president was 
bitterly personal, and was repaid by his ran- 
corous hatred. But Webster, though he was 
really on most questions even more antagonistic 
to the ideas of the Jacksonian school, always 
remained personally on good terms with its 
leaders. 

Clay introduced a resolution directing the 
return of the deposits ; Benton opposed it ; it 
passed by a vote of twenty-eight to eighteen, 
but was lost in the House. Clay then intro- 
duced a resolution demanding to know from the 
president whether the paper alleged to have 
been published by his authority as having been 
read to the cabinet, in relation to the removal 
of the deposits, was genuine or not; and,if it 
was, asking for a copy. Benton opposed the 



132 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

motion, which nevertheless passed. But the 
president refused to accede to the demand. 
Meanwhile the new departure in banking, in- 
augurated by the president, was working badly. 
One of the main grounds for removing the de- 
posits was the allegation that they were used 
to debauch politics. This was never proved 
against the old United States Bank ; but under 
Jackson's administration, which corrupted the 
public service in every way, the deposits became 
fruitful sources of political reward and bribery. 
Clay then introduced his famous resolution 
censuring the president for his action, and sup- 
ported it in a long and fiery speech ; a speech 
which, like most of Clay's, was received by his 
followers at the time with rapture, but in which 
this generation fails to find the sign of that re- 
markable ability with which his own contempo- 
raries credited the great Kentuckian. He at- 
tacked Jackson with fierce invective, painting 
him as an unscrupulous tyrant, who was in- 
augurating a revolution in the government of 
the Union. But he was outdone by Calhoun, 
who, with continual interludes of complacent 
references to the good already done by the 
Nullifiers, assailed Jackson as one of a band of 
artful, corrupt, and cunning politicians, and 
drew a picture even more lurid than Clay's of 
the future of the country, and the danger of 



WAR ON THE BANK. 133 

impending revolution. Webster's speeches were 
more self-contained in tone. Benton was the 
only Jacksonian senator who could contend with 
the great Nullifier and the two great Whigs ; 
aud he replied at length, and in much the same 
style as they had spoken. 

The Senate was flooded with petitions in 
favor of the Bank, which were presented with 
suitable speeches by the leading Whigs. Ben- 
ton ridiculed the exaggerated tone of alarm in 
which these petitions were drawn, and declared 
that the panic, excitement, and suffering exist- 
ing in business circles throughout the country 
were due to the deliberate design of the Bank, 
and afforded a fresh proof that the latter was a 
dangerous power to the state. 

The resolution of censure was at last passed 
by a vote of twenty -six to twenty, and Jack- 
son, in a fury, sent in a written protest against 
it, which the Senate refused to receive. The 
excitement all over the country was intense 
throughout the struggle. The suffering, which 
was really caused by the president's act, but 
which was attributed by his supporters to the 
machinations of the Bank, was very real ; even 
Benton admitted this, although contending that 
it was not a natural result of the policy pursued, 
but had been artificially excited — or, as he 
very clumsily phrased it, "though fictitious and 



134 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

forged, yet the distress was real, and did an im- 
mensity of damage." Neither Jackson nor Ben- 
ton yielded an inch to the outside pressure ; 
the latter was the soul of the fight in Con- 
gress, making over thirty speeches during the 
struggle. 

During the debate on receiving the presi- 
dent's protest, Benton gave notice of his inten- 
tion at an early day to move to expunge from 
the journal the resolution of censure. This 
idea was entirely his own, and he gave the 
notice without having consulted anybody. It 
was, however, a motion after Jackson's own 
heart, as the latter now began to look upon the 
affair as purely personal to himself. His party 
accepted this view of the matter with a servile 
alacrity only surpassed by the way in which its 
leaders themselves bowed down before the mob ; 
and for the next two years the state elections 
were concerned purely with personal politics, 
the main point at issue in the choice for every 
United States senator being, whether he would 
or would not support Benton's expunging reso- 
lution. The whole affair seems to us so puerile 
that we can hardly understand the importance 
attached to it by the actors themselves. But 
the men who happened at that period to be the 
leaders in public affairs were peculiarly and 
frankly incapable of separating in their minds 



WAR ON THE BANK. 135 

matters merely affecting themselves from mat- 
ters affecting their constituents. Each firmly 
believed that if he was not the whole state, he 
was at least a most important fraction of it ; 
and this was as plainly seen in Webster's colos- 
sal egoism and the frank vanity of Henry Clay 
as in Benton's ponderous self-consciousness and 
the all-pervading personality of Andrew Jack- 
son. 

Some of the speeches on the expunging res- 
olution show delicious, although entirely un- 
conscious, humor. If there ever was a wholly 
irrational state of mind it was that in which 
the Jacksonians perpetually kept themselves. 
Every canvass on Jackson's behalf was one of 
sound, fury, and excitement, of appeal to the 
passions, prejudices, and feelings, but never the 
reason, of the people. A speech for him was 
generally a mere frantic denunciation of what- 
ever and whoever was opposed to him, coupled 
with fulsome adulation of " the old hero." His 
supporters rarely indeed spoke to the cool judg- 
ment of the country, for the very excellent rea- 
son that the cool judgment of the country was 
apt to be against them. Such being the case, 
it is amusing to read in Benton's speech on re- 
ceiving the protest the following sentences, ap- 
parently uttered in solemn good faith, and with 
sublime unconsciousness of irony : — 



133 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

To such a community [the American body poli- 
tic] — in an appeal on a great question of constitu- 
tional law to the understandings of such a people — 
declamation, passion, epithets, opprobrious language, 
will stand for nothing. They will float harmless and 
unheeded through the empty air, and strike in vain 
upon the ear of a sober and dispassionate tribunal. 
Indignation, real or affected; wrath, however hot; 
fury, however enraged ; asseverations, however vio- 
lent ; denunciation, however furious, will avail noth- 
ing. Facts, inexorable facts, are all that will be at- 
tended to; reason, calm and self - possessed, is all 
that will be listened to. 

The description of the mass of Jacksonian 
voters as forming " a sober and dispassionate 
tribunal " is an artistic touch of fancy quite 
unique, but admirably characteristic of Benton, 
whose statements always rose vigorously to the 
necessities of the occasion. 

Webster, in an effort to make the best of un- 
toward circumstances, brought in a bill to re- 
charter the Bank for a short period, at the 
same time doing away with some of the features 
that were objectionable in the old charter. This 
bill might have passed, had it not been opposed 
by the extreme Bank men, including Clay and 
Calhoun. In the course of the debate over it 
Benton delivered a very elaborate and carefully 
studied speech in favor of hard money and a 



WAR ON TEE BANK. 137 

currency of the precious metals ; a speech which 
is to this day well worth careful reading. Some 
of his financial theories were crude and con- 
fused ; but on the main question he was per- 
fectly sound. Both he and Jackson deserve 
great credit for having done much to impress 
the popular mind with the benefit of hard, that 
is to say honest, money. Benton was the strong- 
est hard-money man then in public life, being, 
indeed, popularly nicknamed " Old Bullion." 
He thoroughly appreciated that a metallic cur- 
rency was of more vital importance to the la- 
boring men and to men of small capital gen- 
erally than to any of the richer classes. A 
metallic currency is always surer and safer than 
a paper currency ; where it exists a laboring 
man dependent on his wages need fear less than 
any other member of the community the evils 
of bad banking. Benton's idea of the danger 
to the masses from "the money power" was 
exaggerated ; but in advocating a sound gold 
currency he took the surest way to overcome 
any possible dangerous tendency. A craze for 
" soft," or dishonest, money — a greenback 
movement, or one for short weight silver dol- 
lars — works more to the disadvantage of the 
whole mass of the people than even to that of 
the capitalists ; it is a move directly in the in- 
terests of " the money power," which its loud- 



133 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

mouthed advocates are ostensibly opposing in 
the interests of democracy. 

Benton continued his speeches. The panic 
was now subsiding ; there had not been time 
for Jackson's ruinous policy of making deposits 
in numerous state banks, and thereby encour- 
aging wild inflation of credit, to bear fruit and, 
as it afterwards did, involve the whole country 
in financial disaster. Therefore Benton was 
able to exult greatly over the favorable show- 
ing of affairs in the report of the secretary of 
the treasury. He also procured the passage of 
a gold currency law, which, however, fixed the 
ratio of value between gold and silver at sixteen 
to one ; an improper proportion, but one which 
had prevailed for three centuries in the Spanish- 
American countries, from which he copied it. 
In consequence of this law gold, long banished, 
became once more a circulating medium of ex- 
change. 

The Bank of the United States afterwards 
was turned into the State Bank of Pennsylvania ; 
it was badly managed and finally became in- 
solvent. The Jacksonians accepted its down- 
fall as a vindication of their policy ; but in re- 
ality it was due to causes not operative at the 
time of the great struggle between the president 
and the Senate over its continued existence. 
Certainly by no possible financial policy could 



WAR ON THE BANK. 139 

it have produced such widespread ruin and dis- 
tress as did the system introduced by Jackson. 

Long after the Bank controversy had lost all 
practical bearing it continued to be agitated by 
the chief parties to it, who still felt sore from 
the various encounters. Jackson assailed it 
again in his message ; a friendly committee of 
the Senate investigated it and reported in its 
favor, besides going out of their way to rake up 
charges against Jackson and Benton. The lat- 
ter replied in a long speech, and became in- 
volved in personalities with the chairman, Ty- 
ler of Virginia. Neither side paid attention to 
any but the partisan aspect of the question, and 
the discussions were absolutely profitless. 

The whole matter was threshed over again 
and again, long after nothing but chaff was left, 
during the debates on Benton's expunging reso- 
lution. Few now would defend this resolution. 
The original resolution of censure may have 
been of doubtful propriety ; but it was passed, 
was entered on the record, and had become a 
part of the journal of the Senate. It would 
have been perfectly proper to pass another reso- 
lution condemning or reversing the original one, 
and approving the course of the president ; but 
it was in the highest degree improper to set 
about what was in form falsifying the record. 
Still, Benton found plenty of precedents in the 



140 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

annals of other legislative bodies for what he 
proposed to do, and the country, as a whole, 
backed him up heartily. He was further stim- 
ulated by the knowledge that there was prob- 
ably no other legislative act in which Jackson 
took such intense interest, or which could so 
gratify his pride ; the mortification to Clay and 
Calhoun would be equally great. Benton's mo- 
tion failed more than once, but the complexion 
of the Senate was rapidly changed by the vari- 
ous states substituting Democratic for Whig or 
anti-Jackson senators. Some of the changes 
were made, as in Virginia, by senators refusing 
to vote for the expunging resolution, as required 
by the state legislatures, and then resigning 
their seats, pursuant to a ridiculous theory of 
the ultra Democrats, which, if carried out, would 
completely nullify the provision for a six year's 
senatorial term. Finally, at the very close of 
Jackson's administration, Benton found himself 
with a fair majority behind him, and made the 
final move. His speech was of course mainly 
filled with a highly colored account of the bless- 
ings wrought for the American people by An- 
drew Jackson, and equally of course the latter 
was compared at length to a variety of ancient 
Roman worthies. The final scene in the Senate 
had an element of the comic about it. The ex- 
pungers held a caucus and agreed to sit the 



WAR ON THE BANK. 141 

session out until the resolution was passed ; and 
with prudent foiethought Benton, well aware 
that when hungry and tired his followers might 
show less inflexibility of purpose, provided in 
an adjoining committee-room " an ample sup- 
ply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef, pickles, 
wines, and cups of hot coffee," wherewith to in- 
spirit the faint-hearted. 

Fortified by the refreshments, the expungers 
won a complete victory. If the language of 
Jackson's admirers was overdrawn and strained 
to the last degree in lauding him for every vir- 
tue that he had or had not, it must be remem- 
bered that his opponents went quite as far 
wrong on the other side in their denunciations 
and extravagant prophecies of gloom. Webster 
made a very dignified and forcible speech in 
closing the argument against the resolution, but 
Calhoun and Clay were much less moderate, — 
the latter drawing a vivid picture of a rapidly 
approaching reign of lawless military violence, 
and asserting that his- opponents had " extin- 
guished one of the brightest and purest lights 
that ever burnt at the altar of civil liberty." As 
a proper finale Jackson, to show his apprecia- 
tion, gave a great dinner to the expungers and 
their wives, Benton sitting at the head of the 
table. Jackson and Benton solemnly thought 
that they were taking part in a great act of jus- 



142 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

tice, and were amusingly unable to see the comic 
side of their acts. They probably really be- 
lieved most of their own denunciations of the 
Bank, and very possibly thought that the wick- 
edness of its followers might tempt them to do 
any desperate deed. At any rate they enjoyed 
posing alike to themselves and to the public as 
persons of antique virtue, who had risked both 
life and reputation in a hazardous but success- 
ful attempt to save the liberties of the people 
from the vast and hostile forces of the aristo- 
cratic " money power." 

The best verdict on the expunging resolution 
was given by Webster when he characterized 
the whole affair as one which, if it were not re- 
garded as a ruthless violation of a sacred instru- 
ment, would appear to be little elevated above 
the character of a contemptible farce. 



CHAPTER VII. 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 

Benton was supremely self-satisfied with the 
part he had played in the struggle with the 
Bank. But very few thinking men would now 
admit that his actions, as a whole, on the occa- 
sion in question, were to his credit, although in 
the matter of the branch drafts he was per- 
fectl} 7 right, and in that of the re-charter at least 
occupied defensible ground. His general views 
on monetary matters, however, were sound, 
and on some of the financial questions that 
shortly arose he occupied a rather lonely pre- 
eminence of good sense among his fellow sena- 
tors ; such being particularly the case as regards 
the various mischievous schemes in relation to 
disposing of the public lands, and of the money 
drawn from their sale. The revenue derived 
from all sources, including these sales of public 
lands, had for some years been much in excess 
of the governmental expenses, and a surplus 
had accumulated in the treasury. This surplus 
worked more damage than any deficit would 
have done. 



144 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

There were gold mines in the Southern States, 
which had been growing more and more produc- 
tive ; and, as the cost of freighting the bul- 
lion was excessive, a bill was introduced to 
establish branch mints at New Orleans and in 
the gold regions of Georgia and North Carolina. 
Benton advocated this strongly, as a constitu- 
tional right of the South and West, and as 
greatly in the interest of those two sections; 
and also as being another move in favor of a 
hard-money currency as opposed to one of pa- 
per. There was strong opposition to the bill ; 
many of the Whigs having been carried so far 
by their heated devotion to the United States 
Bank in its quarrel that they had become paper- 
money men. But the vote was neither sectional 
nor partisan in its character. Clay led the op- 
position, while Webster supported Benton. 

Before this time propositions to distribute 
among the states the revenue from the public 
lands had become common ; and they were suc- 
ceeded by propositions to distribute the lands 
themselves, and then by others to distribute all 
the surplus revenue. Calhoun finally introduced 
an amendment to the Constitution to enable the 
surplus in the treasury during the next eight 
years to be distributed among the various states*, 
the estimate being that for the time mentioned 
there would be about nine millions surplus an- 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 145 

nually. Benton attacked the proposal very 
ably, showing the viciousness of a scheme which 
would degrade every state government into the 
position of a mendicant, and would allow money 
to be collected from the citizens with one hand 
in order to be given back to them with the 
other; and also denying that the surplus would 
reach anything like the dimensions indicated. 
He ridiculed the idea of making a constitutional 
amendment to cover so short a period of time ; 
and stated that he would greatly prefer to see 
the price paid for public lands by incoming 
settlers reduced, and what surplus there was 
expended on strengthening the defenses of the 
United States against foreign powers. This 
last proposition was eminently proper. We 
were then, as always, in our chronic state of 
utter defenselessness against any hostile attack, 
and yet were in imminent danger of getting em- 
broiled with at least one great power — France. 
Our danger is always that we shall spend too 
little, and not too much, in keeping ourselves 
prepared for foreign war. Calhoun's resolution 
was a total failure, and was never even brought 
to a vote. 

Benton's proposed method of using the sur- 
plus came in with peculiar propriety on account 
of the conduct of the Whigs and Nullifiers in 
joining to oppose the appropriation of three mil- 
10 



146 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

lions of dollars for purposes of defense, which 
was provided for in the general fortification 
bill. The House passed this bill by a great ma- 
jority. It was eminently proper that we should 
at once take steps to provide for the very pos- 
sible contingency of a war with France, as the 
relations with that power were growing more 
threatening every day ; but the opposition of 
the an ti- Jackson men to the administration and 
to all its measures had become so embittered 
that they were willing to run the risk of seri- 
ously damaging the national credit and honor, 
if they could thereby score a point against their 
political adversaries. Accordingly, under the 
lead of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, they de- 
feated the bill in the Senate, in spite of all that 
could be done to save it by Benton, who, what- 
ever his faults, was always patriotic. The ap- 
propriation had been very irregular in form, 
and under ordinary circumstances there would 
have been good justification for inquiring into 
it before permitting its passage ; but under the 
circumstances its defeat at the moment was 
most unfortunate. For the president had been 
pressing France, even to the point of tolerably 
plain threats, in order to induce or compel her 
to fulfill the conditions of the recent treaty by 
which she had bound herself to pay a consider- 
able indemnity, long owing by her to the United 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 147 

States for depredations on our commerce. Now 
she menaced war, avowedly on the ground that 
we were unprepared to resist her ; and this vote 
in the Senate naturally led the French govern- 
ment to suppose that Jackson was not sustained 
by the country in the vigorous position which 
he had assumed. In speaking on the message 
of the president which alluded to this state of 
affairs, Benton strongly advocated our standing 
firmly for our rights, making a good speech, 
which showed much historical learning. He 
severely reproached the anti-administration sen- 
ators for their previous conduct in causing the 
loss of the defense appropriation bill, and for 
preferring to do worse than waste the surplus 
by distributing it among the different states in- 
stead of applying it according to the provisions 
of that wise measure. 

This brought on a bitter wrangle, in which 
Benton certainly had the best of it. Calhoun 
was in favor of humiliating non-resistance ; he 
never advocated warlike measures when the 
dignity of the nation was at stake, fond though 
he was of threatening violence on behalf of 
slavery or that form of secession known as 
nullification. Benton quoted from speeches in 
the French Chamber of Deputies to show that 
the French were encouraged to take the posi- 
tion that they did on account of the action of 



148 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the Senate, and the disposition shown by a 
majority among the senators rather to pull 
down the president in a party struggle than 
to uphold him in his efforts to save the na- 
tional honor in a contest with France. A cu- 
rious feature of his speech was that in which 
he warned the latter power that, in the event 
of a conflict, it would have to do with a branch 
of the same race which, " from the days of 
Agincourt and Crecy, of Blenheim and Ramil- 
lies, down to the days of Salamanca and Wa- 
terloo, has always known perfectly well how 
to deal with the impetuous and fiery courage 
of the French." This sudden out-cropping of 
what, in Bentonian English, might be called 
Pan-Anglo-Saxon sentiment was all the more 
surprising inasmuch as both Benton himself 
and the party to which he belonged were 
strongly anti-English in their way of looking 
at our foreign policy, at least so far as North 
America was concerned. In the end France 
yielded, though trying to maintain her dignity 
by stating that she had not done so, and the 
United States received what was due them. 

Benton strongly opposed the payment by the 
United States of the private claims of its citi- 
zens for damages arising from the French spo- 
liations at the end of the last century. He 
pointed out that the effort to pay such claims, 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 1-19 

scores of years after the time of their accru- 
ing, rarely benefits any of the parties origi- 
nally in interest, and can only do real service 
to dishonest speculators. His speech on this 
matter would not be bad reading for some of 
the pension-jobbing congressmen of the present 
day, and their supporters ; but as concerned 
these French claims he could have been easily 
answered. 

In the controversy over the bill introducd 
by Clay, to distribute the revenue derived from 
the public lands among the states for the next 
five years, Benton showed to great advantage 
compared both to the introducer of the bill him- 
self, and to Webster, his supporter. He had 
all along taken the view of the land question 
that would be natural to a far-seeing Western 
statesman desirous of encouraging immigration. 
He wished the public lands to be sold in small 
parcels to actual settlers, at prices that would 
allow any poor man who was thrifty to take up 
a claim. He had already introduced a bill to 
sell them at graduated prices, the minimum 
being established at a dollar and twenty-five 
cents an acre; but if land remained unsold at 
this rate for three years it was then to be sold 
for what it would bring in the market. This 
bill passed the Senate, but failed in the House. 

In opposing Clay s distribution scheme Ben- 



150 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

ton again brought forward his plan of using the 
surplus to provide for the national defenses ; 
and in his speech showed the strongly national 
turn of his mind, saying : — 

In this great system of national defense the whole 
Union is equally interested ; for the country, in all 
that concerns its defenses, is but a unit, and every 
section is interested in the defense of every other sec- 
tion, and every individual citizen is interested in the 
defense of the whole population. It is in vain to say 
that the navy is on the sea, and the fortifications on 
the sea-board, and that the citizens in the interior 
states, or in the valley of the Mississippi, have no 
interest in these remote defenses. Such an idea is 
mistaken and delusive ; the inhabitant of Missouri or 
of Indiana has a direct interest in keeping open the 
mouths of the rivers, defending the sea-port towns, 
and preserving a naval force that will protect the pro- 
duce of his labor in crossing the ocean and arriving 
safely in foreign markets. 

Benton's patriotism always included the 
whole country in spite of the strength of his 
local sympathies. 

The bill passed the Senate by a rather close 
vote, and went to the House, where it soon be- 
come evident that it was doomed to failure. 
There was another bill, practically of much the 
same import, before the Senate, providing for 
the distribution of the surplus among the states 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 151 

in proportion to their electoral votes, but omit- 
ting the excellent proviso concerning the de- 
fenses. To suit the views of Calhoun and the 
sticklers for strict construction generally, the 
form of this rival bill was changed, so that 
the "distribution" purported to be a "deposit" 
merely ; the money being nominally only loaned 
to the states, who pledged their faith to return 
it when Congress should call for it. As it was 
of course evident that such a loan would never 
be repaid, the substitution of " deposit " for 
"distribution" can only be regarded as a ver- 
bal change to give the doctrinaires a loop-hole 
for escape from their previous position ; they 
all took advantage of it, and the bill received 
overwhelming support, and was passed by both 
houses. 

Benton, however, stood out against it to the 
last, and in a very powerful speech foretold the 
evils which the plan would surely work. He 
scornfully exposed the way in which some of 
the members were trying, by a trick of word- 
ing, to hide the nature of the bill they were 
enacting into a law, and thus to seem to justify 
themselves for the support they were giving it. 
"It is in name a deposit; in form, a loan ; in 
essence and design, a distribution," said Benton. 
He ridiculed the attitude of the hair-splitting 
strict constructionists, like Calhoun, who had 



152 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

always pretended most scrupulously to respect 
the exact wording of the Constitution, and who 
had previously refused to vote for distribution 
on the ground that it was unconstitutional : — 

At the commencement of the present session a 
proposition was made [by Calhoun] to amend the 
Constitution, to permit this identical distribution to be 
made. That proposition is now upon our calendar, 
for the action of Congress. All at once it is discov- 
ered that a change of name will do as well as a 
change of the Constitution. Strike out the word 
" distribute " and insert the word " deposit," and in- 
continently the impediment is removed; the consti- 
tutional difficulty is surmounted, and the distribution 
can be made. 

He showed that to the states themselves the 
moneys distributed would either be useless, or 
else — and much more probably — they would be 
fruitful sources of corruption and political de- 
bauchery. He was quite right. It would have 
been very much better to have destroyed the 
surplus than to have distributed it as was act- 
ually done. None of the states gained any real 
benefit by the transaction ; most were seriously 
harmed. At the best, the money was squan- 
dered in the rage for public improvements that 
then possessed the whole people ; often it was 
stolen outright, or never accounted for. In 
the one case, it was an incentive to extrava- 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 153 
t 

gance ; in the other, it was a corruption fund. 
Yet the popular feeling was strongly in favor 
of the measure at the time, and Benton was 
almost the only public man of note who dared 
to resist it. On this occasion, as in the clos- 
ing act of the struggle with the Nullifiers, he 
showed more backbone than did his great 
chief ; for Jackson signed the bill, although 
criticising it most forcibly and pungently. 

The success of this measure naturally encour- 
aged the presentation of others. Clay attempted 
to revive his land-money distribution bill, but 
was defeated, mainly through Benton's efforts. 
Three or four other similar schemes, including 
one of Calhoun's, also failed. Finally a clause 
providing for a further " deposit " of surplus 
moneys with the states was tacked to a bill ap- 
propriating money for defenses, thereby loading 
it down so that it was eventually lost. In the 
Senate the " deposit " amendment was finally 
struck out, in spite of the opposition of Clay, 
Calhoun, and Webster. Throughout the whole 
discussion of the distribution of the surplus 
Benton certainly shines by comparison with 
any one of his three great senatorial rivals. 

He shows to equally great advantage com- 
pared to them in the part taken by him in ref- 
erence to Jackson's so-called specie circulars, 
The craze for speculation had affected the sales 



154 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

of public lands, which were increasing at an 
extraordinary rate, nearly twenty-five million 
dollars' worth being sold in 1836. As a rule, 
the payments were made in the notes of irre- 
sponsible banks, gotten up in many cases by the 
land speculators themselves. The sales were 
running up to five millions a month, with pros- 
pect of a boundless increase, so that all the public 
land bade fair to be converted into inconverti- 
ble paper. Benton had foreseen the evil results 
attending such a change, and, though well 
aware that he was opposing powerful interests 
in his own section of the country, had already 
tried to put a stop to it by law. In his speech 
he had stated that the unprecedented increase 
in the sale of public lands was due to the 
accommodations received by speculators from 
worthless banks, whose notes in small denomi- 
nations would be taken to some distant part of 
the country, whence it would be a long time 
before they were returned and presented for 
payment. The speculators, with paper of which 
the real value was much below par, could out- 
bid settlers and cultivators who could only 
offer specie, or notes that were its equivalent. 
He went on to say that " the effect was equally 
injurious to every interest concerned — except 
the banks and the speculators : it was injurious 
to the treasury, which was filling up with paper ; 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS. 155 

to the new states, which were flooded with 
paper ; and to settlers and cultivators, who were 
outbid by speculators loaded with this bor- 
rowed, paper. A return to specie payments for 
lands was the remedy for all these evils." 

Benton's reasoning was perfectly sound. The 
effects on settlers, on the new states, and on 
the government itself were precisely such as he 
described, and the proposed remedy was the 
right one. But his bill failed ; for the Whigs, 
including even Webster, had by this time 
worked themselves up until they were fairly 
crazy at the mere mention of paper -money 
banks. 

Jackson, however, not daunted by the fate of 
the bill, got Benton to draw up a treasury order, 
and had it issued. This served the same pur- 
pose, as it forbade the land-offices to receive 
anything but gold and silver in payment for 
land. It was not issued until Congress had ad- 
journed, for fear that body might counteract it 
by a law ; and this was precisely what was 
attempted at the next session, when a joint 
resolution was passed rescinding the order, and 
practically endeavoring to impose the worthless 
paper currency of the states upon the federal 
government. Benton stood almost alone in the 
fight he made against this resolution, although 
the right of the matter was so plainly on his 



156 THOMAS II ART BENTON. 

side. In his speech he foretold clearly the 
coming of the great financial crisis that was 
then near at hand. The resolution, however, 
amounted to nothing, as it turned out, for it 
was passed so late in the session that the presi- 
dent, by simply withholding his signature from 
it, was enabled to prevent it from having effect. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 

Towards the close of Jackson's administra- 
tion, slavery for the first time made its perma- 
nent appearance in national politics ; although 
for some years yet it had little or no influence 
in shaping the course of political movements. 
In 1833 the abolition societies of the North 
came into prominence ; they had been started a 
couple of years previously. 

Black slavery was such a grossly anachronistic 
and un-American form of evil, that it is diflicult 
to discuss calmly the efforts to abolish it, and 
to remember that many of these efforts were 
calculated to do, and actually did, more harm 
than good. We are also very apt to forget that 
it was perfectly possible and reasonable for en- 
lightened and virtuous men, who fully recog- 
nized it as an evil, yet to prefer its continuance 
to having it interfered with in a way that would 
produce even worse results. Black slavery in 
Hayti was characterized by worse abuse than 
ever was the case in the United States ; yet, 



158 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

looking at the condition of that republic now, 
it may well be questioned whether it would not 
have been greatly to her benefit in the end to 
have had slavery continue a century or so 
longer, — its ultimate extinction being certain, 
— rather than to have had her attain freedom 
as she actually did, with the results that have 
flowed from her action. When an evil of colos- 
sal size exists, it is often the case that there is 
no possible way of dealing with it that will not 
itself be fraught with baleful results. Nor can 
the ultra -philanthropic method be always, or 
even often, accepted as the best. If there is one 
question upon which the philanthrophists of 
the present day, especially the more emotional 
ones, are agreed, it is that any law restricting 
Chinese immigration is an outrage ; yet it seems 
incredible that any man of even moderate intel- 
ligence should not see that no greater calamity 
could now befall the United States than to have 
the Pacific slope fill up with a Mongolian popu- 
lation. 

The cause of the Abolitionists has had such a 
halo shed round it by the after course of events, 
which they themselves in reality did very little 
to shape, that it has been usual to speak of 
them with absurdly exaggerated praise. Their 
courage, and for the most part their sincerity, 
cannot be too highly spoken of, but their share 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 159 

in abolishing slavery was far less than has com- 
monly been represented ; any single non-aboli- 
tionist politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did 
more than all the professional Abolitionists com- 
bined really to bring about its destruction. The 
abolition societies were only in a very restricted 
degree the causes of the growing feeling in the 
North against slavery ; they are rather to be re- 
garded as themselves manifestations or accom- 
paniments of that feeling. The anti-slavery out- 
burst in the Northern States over the admission 
of Missouri took place a dozen years before 
there was an abolition society in existence ; and 
the influence of the professional abolitionists 
upon the growth of the anti-slavery sentiment 
as often as not merely warped it and twisted it 
out of proper shape, — as when at one time they 
showed a strong inclination to adopt disunion 
views, although it was self-evident that by no 
possibility could slavery be abolished unless the 
Union was preserved. Their tendency towards 
impracticable methods was well shown in the 
position they assumed towards him who was 
not only the greatest American, but also the 
greatest man, of the nineteenth century ; for dur- 
ing all the terrible four years that sad, strong, 
patient Lincoln worked and suffered for the 
people, he had to dread the influence of the ex- 
treme Abolitionists only less than that of the 



160 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Copperheads. Many of their leaders possessed 
no good qualities beyond their fearlessness and 
truth — qualities that were also possessed by 
the Southern fire-eaters. They belonged to 
that class of men that is always engaged in 
some agitation or other ; only it happened that 
in this particular agitation they were right. 
Wendell Phillips may be taken as a very good 
type of the whole. His services against slavery 
prior to the war should always be remembered 
with gratitude ; but after the war, and until 
the day of his death, his position on almost 
every public question was either mischievous or 
ridiculous, and usually both. 

When the abolitionist movement started it 
was avowedly designed to be cosmopolitan in 
character ; the originators looked down upon 
any merely national or patriotic feeling. This 
again deservedly took away from their influ- 
ence. In fact, it would have been most un- 
fortunate had the majority of the Northerners 
been from the beginning in hearty accord with 
the Abolitionists ; at the best it would have re- 
sulted at that time in the disruption of the 
Union and the perpetuation of slavery in the 
South. 

But after all is said, the fact remains, that on 
the main issue the Abolitionists were at least 
working in the right direction. Sooner or later, 



SLAVE QUEST ION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 161 

by one means or another, slavery had to go. 
It is beyond doubt a misfortune that in cer- 
tain districts the bulk of the population should 
be composed of densely ignorant negroes, often 
criminal or vicious in their instincts ; but such 
is the case, and the best, and indeed the only 
proper course to pursue, is to treat them with 
precisely the same justice that is meted out to 
whites. The effort to do so in time immedi- 
ately past has not resulted so successfully as 
was hoped and expected ; but nevertheless no 
other way would have worked as well. 

Slavery was chiefly responsible for the streak 
of coarse and brutal barbarism which ran 
through the Southern character, and which 
marked the ferocious outcry instantly raised 
by the whole Southern press against the Abo- 
litionists. There had been an abortive negro 
rising in Virginia almost at the same time that 
the abolitionist movement first came into prom- 
inence ; and this fact added to the rage and ter- 
ror with which the South regarded the latter. 
The clamor against the North was deafening ; 
and though it soon subsided for the time being, 
it never afterwards entirely died away. As 
'has been shown already, there had always been 
a strong separatist feeling in the South ; but 
hitherto its manifestations had been local and 
sporadic, never affecting all the states at the 



162 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

same time ; for it had never happened that the 
cause which called forth any particular mani- 
festation was one bearing on the whole South 
alike. The alien and sedition laws were more 
fiercely resented in Virginia and Kentucky than 
in South Carolina ; the tariff, which so angered 
the latter, pleased Louisiana ; and Georgia and 
Alabama alone were affected by the presence 
of great Indian communities within their bor- 
ders. But slavery was an interest common to 
the whole South. When it was felt to be in any 
way menaced, all Southerners came together 
for its protection ; and, from the time of the 
rise of the Abolitionists onward, the separatist 
movement throughout the South began to iden- 
tify itself with the maintenance of slavery, 
and gradually to develop greater and greater 
strength. Its growth was furthered and has- 
tened by the actions of the more ambitious and 
unscrupulous of the Southern politicians, who 
saw that it offered a chance for them to push 
themselves forward, and who were perfectly 
willing to wreak almost irreparable harm to 
the nation if by so doing they could advance 
their own selfish interests. It was in reference 
to these politicians that Benton quoted with' 
approval a letter from ex-President Madison, 
which ran : — 



SLAVE QUEST/ON APPEARS IN POL /TICS. 163 

The danger is not to be concealed, that the sym- 
pathy arising from known causes, and the inculcated 
impression of a permanent incompatibility of inter- 
ests between the South and the North may put it in 
the power of popular leaders, aspiring to the highest 
stations, to unite the South, on some critical occasion, 
in a course that will end by creating a new theatre 
of great, though inferior, interest. In pursuing this 
course the first and most obvious step is nullification, 
the next secession, and the last a farewell separation. 

This was a pretty good forecast of the crisis 
that was precipitated by the greedy and reck- 
less ambition of the secessionist leaders in 1860. 
The moral difference between Benedict Arnold 
on the one hand, and Aaron Burr or Jefferson 
Davis on the other, is precisely the difference 
that obtains between a politician who sells his 
vote for money and one who supports a bad 
measure in consideration of being given some 
high political position. 

The Abolitionists immediately contrived to 
bring themselves before the notice of Congress 
in two ways ; by the presentation of petitions 
for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia, and by sending out to the Southern 
States a shoal of abolition pamphlets, news- 
papers, and rather ridiculous illustrated cuts. 
What the precise point of the last proceeding 
was no one can tell ; the circulation of such 



164 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

writings as theirs in the South could not pos- 
sibly serve any good purpose. But they had a 
right to send what they wished, and the conduct 
of many of the Southerners in trying to get a 
federal law passed to prohibit their writings 
from being carried in the mail was as wrong as 
it was foolish ; while the brutal clamor raised 
in the South against the whole North as well 
as against the Abolitionists, and the conduct 
of certain Southern legislatures in practically 
setting prices on the heads of the leaders in 
the objectionable movement, in turn angered 
the North and gave the Abolitionists tenfold 
greater strength than they would otherwise 
have had. 

The question first arose upon the presentation 
of a perfectly proper and respectful petition 
sent to the Senate by a society of Pennsylvania 
Quakers, and praying for the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia. The District was 
solely under the control of Congress, and was 
the property of the nation at large, so that Con- 
gress was the proper and the only body to which 
any petition concerning the affairs of the Dis- 
trict could be sent ; and if the right of petition 
meant anything, it certainly meant that the 
people, or any portion thereof, should have the 
right to petition their representatives in regard 
to their own affairs. Yet certain Southern ex- 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 165 

tremists, under the lead of Calhoun, were anx- 
ious to refuse to receive the paper. Benton 
voted in favor of receiving it, and was followed 
in his action by a number of other Southern 
senators. He spoke at length on the subject, 
and quite moderately, even crediting the peti- 
tioners, or many of them, with being " good peo- 
ple, aiming at benevolent objects, and endeav- 
oring to ameliorate the condition of one part of 
the human race, without inflicting calamities on 
another part," which was going very far indeed 
for a slave-holding senator of that time. He 
was of course totally opposed to abolition and 
the Abolitionists, and showed that the only im- 
mediate effect of the movement had been to 
make the lot of the slaves still worse, and for the 
moment to do away with any chance of intelli- 
gently discussing the question of emancipation. 
For, like many other Southerners, he fondly 
cherished the idea of gradual peaceful emanci- 
pation, — an idea which the course of events 
made wholly visional'} 7 , but which, under the 
circumstances, might well have been realized. 
He proceeded to give most questionable praise 
to the North for some acts as outrageous and 
disgraceful as were ever perpetrated by its citi- 
zens, stating that — 

Their conduct was above all praise, above all 
thanks, above all gratitude. They had chased off the 



166 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of 
female dupes, and dispersed the assemblages, whether 
fanatical, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congre- 
gated to preach against evils that affected others, not 
themselves ; and to propose remedies to aggravate the 
disease which they had pretended to cure. They 
had acted with a noble spirit. They had exerted a 
vigor beyond all law. They had obeyed the enact- 
ments, not of the statute-book, but of the heart. 

These fervent encomiums were fully warranted 
by the acts of various Northern mobs, that had 
maltreated abolitionist speakers, broken up 
anti-slaver} 7 meetings, and committed numerous 
other deeds of lawless violence. But however 
flattered the Northerners of that generation 
may have been, in feeling that they thoroughly 
deserved Benton's eulogy, it is doubtful if their 
descendants will take quite the same pride in 
looking back to it. An amusing incident of the 
debate was Calhoun's attack upon one of the 
most subservient allies the South ever had in 
the Northern States ; he caused to be sent up 
to the desk and read an abolition paper pub- 
lished in New Hampshire, which contained a 
bitter assault upon Franklin Pierce, then a 
member of Congress. Nominally he took this 
course to show that there was much greater 
strength in the abolition movement, and there- 
fore much greater danger to the South, than the 



SLAVE QUEST/ON APPEARS IN POLITICS. 167 

Northern senators were willing to admit ; in real- 
ity he seems to have acted partly from wanton 
malice, partly from overbearing contempt for 
the truckling allies and apologists of slavery in 
the North, and partly from a desire not to see 
the discussion die out, but rather, in spite of his 
continual profession to the contrary, to see it 
maintained as a standing subject of irritation. 
He wished to refuse to receive the petitions, on 
the ground that they touched a subject that 
ought not even to be discussed ; yet he must 
have known well that he was acting in the very 
way most fitted to give rise to discussion, — a 
fact that was pointed out to him by Benton, in 
a caustic speech. He also took the ground that 
the question of emancipation affected the states 
exclusively, and that Congress had no more ju- 
risdiction over the subject in the District of 
Columbia than she had in the State of North 
Carolina. This precious contribution to the 
true interpretation of the Constitution was so 
farcically and palpably false that it is incredi- 
ble that he should himself have believed what 
he was saying. He was still smarting from the 
nullification controversy ; he had seceded from 
his party, and was sore with disappointed am- 
bition ; and it seems very improbable that he 
was honest in his professions of regret at see- 
ing questions come up which would disturb 



168 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the Union. On the contrary, much of the op- 
position he was continually making to supposi- 
titious federal and Northern encroachments on 
the rights of the South must have been merely 
factious, and it seems likely that, partly from a 
feeling of revenge and partly with the hope of 
gratifying his ambition, he was anxious to do 
all he could to work the South up to the high- 
est pitch of irritation, and keep her there until 
there was a dissolution of the Union. Benton 
evidently thought that this was the case ; and 
in reading the constant threats of nullification 
and secession which run through all Calhoun's 
speeches, and the innumerable references he 
makes to the alleged fact that he had come off 
victorious in his treasonable struggle over the 
tariff in 1833, it is difficult not to accept Ben- 
ton's view of the matter. He always spoke of 
Calhoun with extreme aversion, and there were 
probably moments when he was inclined heartily 
to sympathize with Jackson's death-bed regret 
that he had not hung the South Carolina Nulli- 
fier. Doubtless in private life, or as regards 
any financial matters, Calhoun's conduct was 
always blameless ; but it may well be that he 
has received far more credit for purity of motive 
in his public conduct than his actions fairly en- 
title him to. 

Calhoun was also greatly exercised over the 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 169 

circulation of abolition documents in the South. 
At his request a committee of five was ap- 
pointed to draft a bill on the subject ; he was 
chairman, and three of the other four members 
were from the Slave States ; yet his report was 
so extreme that only one of the latter would 
sign it with him. He introduced into it a long 
argument to the effect that the Constitution 
was a mere compact between sovereign states, 
and inferentially that nullification and secession 
were justifiable and constitutional ; and then 
drew a vivid picture of the unspeakable horrors 
with which, as he contended, the action of the 
Northern Abolitionists menaced the South. The 
bill subjected to penalties any postmaster who 
should knowingly receive and put into the mail 
any publication touching slavery, to go into 
any state which had forbidden by law the cir- 
culation of such a publication. In discussing 
this bill he asserted that Congress, in refusing 
to pass it, would be cooperating with the Aboli- 
tionists ; and then he went on to threaten as 
usual that in such case nullification or secession 
would become necessary. Benton had become 
pretty well tired of these threats, his attach- 
ment to the Union even exceeding his dislike 
to seeing slavery meddled with ; and he headed 
the list of half a dozen Southern senators who 
joined with the bulk of the Northerners in de- 



170 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

feating the bill, which was lost by a vote of 
twenty-five to nineteen. A few of the North- 
ern "dough-faces " voted with Calhoun. There 
is a painfully striking contrast between the 
courage shown by Benton, a slave-holder with 
a slave-holding constituency, in opposing this 
bill, and the obsequious subserviency to the ex- 
treme Southern feeling shown on the same oc- 
casion by Wright, Van Buren, and Buchanan 
— fit representatives of the sordid and odious 
political organizations of New York and Penn- 
sylvania. 

Several other questions came up towards the 
end of Jackson's administration which were 
more or less remotely affected by the feeling 
about slavery. Benton succeeded in getting a 
bill through to extend the boundaries of the 
State of Missouri so as to take in territory lying 
northwest of her previous limit, the Indian 
title to which was extinguished by treaty. This 
annexed land lay north of the boundary for 
slave territory established by the Missouri Com- 
promise ; but Benton experienced no difficulty 
in getting his bill through. It was not, how- 
ever, in the least a move designed in the inter- 
ests of the slave power. Missouri's feeling was 
precisely that which would actuate Oregon or 
Washington Territory to-day, if either wished 
to annex part of Northern Idaho. 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 171 

The territories of Arkansas and Michigan had 
applied for admission into the Union as states ; 
and as one would be a free and the other a slave 
state, it was deemed proper that they should 
come in together. Benton himself urged the 
admission of the free state of Michigan, while 
the interests of Arkansas were confided to 
Buchanan of Pennsylvania. The slavery ques- 
tion entered but little into the matter ; although 
some objections were raised on that score, as 
well as on account of the irregular manner in 
which the would-be states had acted in prepar- 
ing for admission. The real ground of opposi- 
tion to the admission of the two new states was 
political, as it was known that they could both 
be relied upon for Democratic majorities at 
the approaching presidential election. Many 
Whigs, therefore, both from the North and the 
South, opposed it. 

The final removal of the Cherokees from 
Georgia and Alabama was brought about in 
1836 by means of a treaty with those Indians. 
Largely through the instrumentality of Benton, 
and in spite of the opposition of Clay, Calhoun, 
and Webster, this instrument was ratified in the 
Senate by the close vote of thirty-one to fifteen. 
Although new slave territory was thus acquired, 
the vote on the treaty was factional and not 
sectional, being equally divided between the 



172 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Northern and the Southern States, Calhoun 
and six other Southern senators opposing it, 
chiefly from hostility to the administration. 
The removal of the Indians was probably a ne- 
cessity ; undoubtedly it worked hardship in in- 
dividual instances, but on the whole it did not 
in the least retard the civilization of the tribe, 
which was fully paid for its losses ; and more- 
over, in its new home, continued to make prog- 
ress in every way until it became involved in 
the great civil war, and received a setback from 
which it has not yet recovered. These Chero- 
kees were almost the last Indians left in any 
number east of the Mississippi, and their re- 
moval solved the Indian problem so far as the 
old states were concerned. 

Later on Benton went to some trouble to 
disprove the common statement that we have 
robbed the original Indian occupants of their 
lands. He showed by actual statistics that up 
to 1840 we had paid to the Indians eighty-five 
millions of dollars for land purchases, which 
was over five times as much as the United 
States gave the great Napoleon for Louisiana ; 
and about three times as much as we paid 
France, Spain, and Mexico together for the 
purchase of Louisiana, Florida, and California ; 
while the amount of land received in return 
would not equal any one of these purchases, 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 173 

and was but a fractional part of Lousiana or 
California. We paid the Cherokees for their 
territory exactly as much as we paid the French, 
at the height of their power, for Louisiana ; 
while as to the Creek and Choctaw nations, we 
paid each more for their lands than we paid for 
Louisiana and Florida combined. The dealings 
of the government with the Indian have often 
been unwise, and sometimes unjust ; but they 
are very far indeed from being so black as is 
commonly represented, especially when the tre- 
mendous difficulties of the case are taken into 
account. 

Far more important than any of these mat- 
ters was the acknowledgment of the indepen- 
dence of Texas ; and in this, as well as in the 
troubles with Mexico which sprang from it, 
slavery again played a prominent part, although 
not nearly so important at first as has com- 
monly been represented. Doubtless the slave- 
holders worked hard to secure additional terri- 
tory out of which to form new slave states ; but 
Texas and California would have been in the 
end taken by us, had there not been a single 
slave in the Mississippi valley. The greed for 
the conquest of new lands which characterized 
the Western people had nothing whatever to do 
with the fact that some of them owned slaves. 
Long before there had been so much as the 



174 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

faintest foreshadowing of the importance which 
the slavery question was to assume, the West 
had been eagerly pressing on to territorial con- 
quest, and had been chafing and fretting at the 
restraint put upon it, and at the limits set to 
its strivings by the treaties established with 
foreign powers. The first settlers beyond the 
Alleghanies, and their immediate successors, 
who moved down along the banks of the Ohio, 
the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, and thence 
out to the Mississippi itself, were not generally 
slave-holders ; but they were all as anxious to 
wrest the Mississippi valley from the control of 
the French as their descendants were to overrun 
the Spanish lands lying along the Rio Grande. 
In other words, slavery had very little to do 
with the Western aggressions on Mexican ter- 
ritory, however it might influence the views of 
Southern statesmen as to lending support to 
the Western schemes. 

The territorial boundaries of all the great 
powers originally claiming the soil of the West 
— France, Spain, and the United States — were 
very ill-defined, there being no actual possession 
of the lands in dispute, and each power making 
a great showing on its own map. If the ex- 
treme views of any one were admitted, its adver- 
sary, for the time being, would have had noth- 
ing. Thus before the treaty of 1819 with Spain 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 175 

our nominal boundaries and those of the latter 
power in the West overlapped each other ; and 
the extreme Western men persisted in saying 
that we had given up some of the territory 
which belonged to us because we had consented 
to adopt a middle line of division, and had not 
insisted upon being allowed the full extent of 
our claims. Benton always took this view of 
it, insisting that we had given up our rights 
by the adoption of this treaty. Many South- 
erners improved on this idea, and spoke of the 
desirability of " re-annexing " the territory we 
had surrendered, — endeavoring by the use of 
this very inappropriate word to give a color of 
right to their proceedings. As a matter of fact 
it was inevitable, as well as in the highest de- 
gree desirable for the good of humanity at large, 
that the American people should ultimately 
crowd out the Mexicans from their sparsely pop- 
ulated Northern provinces. But it was quite 
as desirable that this should not be done in the 
interests of slavery. 

American settlers had begun to press into the 
outlying Spanish province of Texas before the 
treaty of 1819 was ratified. Their numbers 
went on increasing, and at first the Mexican 
government, having achieved independence of 
Spain, encouraged their incoming. But it soon 
saw that their presence boded danger, and for- 



176 TnOMAS HART BENTON. 

bade further immigration ; without effect, how- 
ever, as the settlers and adventurers came 
thronging in as fast as ever. The Americans 
had brought their slaves with them, and when 
the Mexican government issued a decree liber- 
ating all slaves, they refused to be bound by it ; 
and this decree was among the reasons alleged 
for their revolt. It has been represented as the 
chief if not the sole cause of the rebellion ; but in 
reality it was not the cause at all ; it was merely 
one of the occasions. Long before slavery had 
been abolished in Mexico, and before it had be- 
come an exciting question in the United States, 
the infant colony of Texas, when but a few 
months old, had made an abortive attempt at 
insurrection. Any one who has ever been on 
the frontier, and who knows anything whatever 
of the domineering, masterful spirit and bitter 
race prejudices of the white frontiersmen, will 
acknowledge at once that it was out of the 
question that the Texans should long continue 
under Mexican rule ; and it would have been 
a great misfortune if they had. It was out of 
the question to expect them to submit to the 
mastery of the weaker race, which they were 
supplanting. Whatever might be the pretexts 
alleged for revolt, the real reasons were to be 
found in the deeply-marked difference of race, 
and in the absolute unfitness of the Mexicans 



• SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 177 

then to govern themselves, to say nothing of 
governing others. During the dozen years that 
the American colony in Texas formed part of 
Mexico, the government of the latter went 
through revolution after revolution, — republic, 
empire, and military dictatorship following one 
another in bewildering succession. A state of 
things like this in the central government, espe- 
cially when the latter belonged to a race alien 
in blood, language, religion, and habits of life, 
would warrant any community in determining 
to shift for itself. Such would probably have 
been the result even on people as sober and 
peaceable as the Texan settlers were warlike, 
reckless, and overbearing. 

But the majority of those who fought for 
Texan independence were not men who had al- 
ready settled in that territory, but, on the con- 
trary, were adventurers from the States, who 
had come to help their kinsmen and to win for 
themselves, by their own prowess, homes on 
what was then Mexican soil. It may as well be 
frankly admitted that the conduct of the Amer- 
ican frontiersmen all through this contest can 
be justified on no possible plea of international 
morality or law. Still, we cannot judge them 
by the same standard we should apply to the 
dealings between highly civilized powers of ap- 
proximately the same grade of virtue and intel- 

12 



178 THOMAS I1ART BENTON. 

ligence. Two nations may be contemporane- 
ous so far as mere years go, and yet, for all that, 
may be existing among surroundings which 
practically are centuries apart. The nineteenth 
century on the banks of the Thames, the Seine, 
and the Rhine, or even of the Hudson and the 
Potomac, was one thing ; the nineteenth century 
in the valley of the Rio Grande was another and 
quite a different thing. 

The conquest of Texas should properly be 
classed with conquests like those of the Norse 
sea-rovers. The virtues and faults alike of the 
Texans were those of a barbaric age. They 
were restless, brave, and eager for adventure, 
excitement, and plunder ; they were warlike, 
resolute, and enterprising; they had all the 
marks of a young and hardy race, flushed with 
the pride of strength and self-confidence. On 
the other hand they showed again and again the 
barbaric vices of boastfulness, ignorance, and 
cruelty ; and they were utterly careless of the 
rights of others, looking upon the possessions of 
all weaker races as simply their natural prey. 
A band of settlers entering Texas was troubled 
by no greater scruples of conscience than, a 
thousand years before, a ship-load of Knut's fol- 
lowers might have felt at landing in England •, 
and when they were engaged in warfare with 
the Mexicans they could count with certainty 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 179 

upon assistance from their kinsfolk who had 
been left behind, and for the same reasons that 
had enabled Rolf's Norsemen on the sea-coast of 
France to rely confidently on Scandinavian help 
in their quarrels with their Karling over-lords. 
The great Texan hero, Houston, who drank 
hard and fought hard, who was mighty in battle 
and crafty in council, with his reckless, boastful 
courage and his thirst for changes and risks of 
all kinds, his propensity for private brawling, 
and his queerly blended impulses for good and 
evil, might, with very superficial alterations of 
character, stand as the type of an old-world 
Viking — plus the virtue of a deep and earn- 
estly patriotic attachment to his whole coun- 
try. Indeed his career was as picturesque and 
romantic as that of Harold Hardraada himself, 
and, to boot, was much more important in its 
results. 

Thus the Texan struggle for independence 
stirred up the greatest sympathy and enthu- 
siasm in the United States. The administra- 
tion remained nominally neutral, but obviously 
sympathized with the Texans, permitting arms 
and men to be sent to their help, without hin- 
drance, and indeed doing not a little discredit- 
able bullying in the diplomatic dealing with 
Mexico, which that unfortunate community had 
her hands too full to resent. Still we did not 



180 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

commit a more flagrant breach of neutrality 
than, for instance, England was at the same 
time engaged in committing in reference to the 
civil wars in Spain. The victory of San Jacinto, 
in which Houston literally annihilated a Mex- 
ican force twice the strength of his own, virtu- 
ally decided the contest ; and the Senate at 
once passed a resolution recognizing the inde- 
pendence of Texas. Calhoun wished that body 
to go farther, and forthwith admit Texas as a 
state into the Union ; but Benton and his col- 
leagues were not prepared to take such a step 
at so early a date, although intending of course 
that in the end she should be admitted. There 
was little opposition to the recognition of Texan 
independence, although a few members of the 
lower house, headed by Adams, voted against it. 
While a cabinet officer, and afterwards as pres- 
ident, Adams had done all that he could to pro- 
cure by purchase or treaty the very land which 
was afterwards the cause of our troubles with 
Mexico. 

Much the longest and most elaborate speech 
in favor of the recognition of Texan indepen- 
dence was made by Benton, to whom the sub- 
ject appealed very strongly. He announced 
emphatically that he spoke as a Western sena- 
tor, voicing the feeling of the West ; and he was 
right. The opposition to the growth of our 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 181 

country on its southwestern frontier was al- 
most confined to the Northeast ; the West as a 
whole, free states as well as slave, heartily fa- 
vored the movement. The settlers of Texas 
had come mainly, it is true, from the slave 
states ; but there were also many who had been 
born north of the Ohio. It was a matter of 
comment that the guns used at San Jacinto 
had come from Cincinnati — and so had some 
of those who served them. 

In Benton's speech he began by pointing out 
the impropriety of doing what Calhoun had 
done in attempting to complicate the question 
of the recognition of Texan independence with 
the admission of Texas as a state. He then pro- 
ceeded to claim for us a good deal more credit 
than we were entitled to for our efforts to 
preserve neutrality; drew a very true picture 
of the commercial bonds that united us to Mex- 
ico, and of the necessity that they should not be 
lightly broken ; gave a spirited sketch of the 
course of the war hitherto, condemning without 
stint the horrible butcheries committed by the 
Mexicans, but touching gingerly on the savage 
revenge taken by the Americans in their turn ; 
and ended by a eulogy of the Texans them- 
selves, and their leaders. 

It was the age of "spread-eagle" speeches, 
and many of Benton's were no exception to the 



182 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

rule. As a people we were yet in a condition 
of raw, crude immaturity ; and our very sensi- 
tiveness to foreign criticism — a sensitiveness 
which we now find it difficult to understand — 
and the realization of our own awkwardness 
made us inclined to brag about and exaggerate 
our deeds. Our public speakers and writers 
acquired the abominable habit of speaking of 
everything and everybody in the United States 
in the superlative ; and therefore, as we claimed 
the highest rank for all our fourth-rate men, we 
put it out of our power to do justice to the 
really first -rate ones; and on account of our 
continual exaggerations we were not believed 
by others, and hardly even believed ourselves, 
when we presented estimates that were truthful. 
When every public speaker was declared to be 
a Demosthenes or a Cicero, people failed to real- 
ize that we actually had, in Webster, the great- 
est orator of the century ; and when every gen- 
eral who whipped an Indian tribe was likened 
to Napoleon, we left ourselves no words with 
which properly to characterize the really heroic 
deeds done from time to time in the grim fron- 
tier warfare. All Benton's oratory took on this 
lurid coloring ; and in the present matter his 
final eulogy of the Texan warriors was greatly 
strained, though it would hardly have been in 
his power to pay too high a tribute to some of 



SLAVE QUESTION APPEARS IN POLITICS. 183 

the deeds they had done. It was the heroic 
age of the Southwest ; though, as with every 
other heroic age, there were plenty of failings, 
vices, and weaknesses visible, if the stand-point 
of observation was only close enough. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 

In his dealings with the Bank and his dis- 
posal of the deposits Jackson ate sour grapes to 
his heart's content ; and now the teeth of his 
adopted child Van Buren were to be set on 
edge. 

Van Buren was the first product of what are 
now called "machine politics" that was put 
into the presidential chair. He owed his ele- 
vation solely to his own dexterous political 
manipulation, and to the fact that, for his own 
selfish ends, and knowing perfectly well their 
folly, he had yet favored or connived at all 
the actions into which the administration had 
been led either through Jackson's ignorance and 
violence, or by the crafty unscrupulousness 
and limited knowledge of the Kitchen Cabinet. 
The people at large would never have thought 
of him for president of their own accord ; but he 
had become Jackson's political legatee, partly 
because he had personally endeared himself to 
the latter, and partly because the politicians 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 185 

felt that he was a man whom they could trust. 
The Jacksonian Democracy was already com- 
pletely ruled by a machine, of which the most 
important cogs were the countless office-holders, 
whom the spoils system had already converted 
into a band of well-drilled political mercenaries. 
A political machine can only be brought to a 
state of high perfection in a party containing 
very many ignorant and uneducated voters ; 
and the Jacksonian Democracy held in its 
ranks the mass of the ignorance of the country. 
Besides this such an organization requires, in 
order that it may do its most effective work, to 
have as its leader and figure-head a man who 
really has a great hold on the people at large, 
and who yet can be managed by such politi- 
cians as possess the requisite adroitness ; and 
Jackson fulfilled both these conditions. The fa- 
mous Kitchen Cabinet was so called because 
its members held no official positions, and yet 
were known to have Jackson more under their 
influence than was the case with his nominal 
advisers. They stood as the first representa- 
tives of a type common enough afterwards, and 
of which Thurlow Weed was perhaps the best 
example. They were men who held no public 
position, and yet devoted their whole time to 
politics, and pulled the strings in obedience to 
which the apparent public leaders moved. ' 



186 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Jackson liked Van Buren because the latter 
had served him both personally and politically 
— indeed Jackson was incapable of distinguish- 
ing between a political and a personal service. 
This liking, however, would not alone have ad- 
vanced Van Buren's interests, if the latter, who 
was himself a master in the New York state 
machine, had not also succeeded in enlisting the 
good-will and self-interest of the members of 
the Kitchen Cabinet and the other intimate ad- 
visers of the president. These first got Jack- 
son himself thoroughly committed to Van 
Buren, and then used his name and enormous 
influence with the masses, coupled with their 
own mastery of machine methods, to bring 
about the New Yorker's nomination. In both 
these moves they had been helped, and Van 
Buren's chances had been immensely improved, 
by an incident that had seemed at the time very 
unfortunate for the latter. When he was sec- 
retary of state, in carrying on negotiations with 
Great Britain relative to the West India trade, 
he had so far forgotten what was due to the dig- 
nity of the nation as to allude disparagingly, 
while thus communicating with a foreign power, 
to the course pursued by the previous adminis- 
tration. This extension of party lines into our 
foreign diplomacy was discreditable to the 
whole country. The anti-administration men 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 187 

bitterly resented it, and emphasized their resent- 
ment by rejecting the nomination of Van Buren 
when Jackson wished to make him minister to 
England. Their action was perfectly proper, 
and Van Buren, by right, should have suffered 
for his undignified and unpatriotic conduct. 
But instead of this, and in accordance with the 
eternal unfitness of things, what really happened 
was that his rejection by the Senate actually 
helped him ; for Jackson promptly made the 
quarrel his own, and the masses blindly followed 
their idol. Benton exultingly and truthfully 
said that the president's foes had succeeded in 
breaking a minister only to make a president. 

Van Buren faithfully served the mammon of 
unrighteousness, both in his own state and, later 
on, at Washington ; and he had his reward, 
for he was advanced to the highest offices in the 
gift of the nation. He had no reason to blame 
his own conduct for his final downfall ; he got 
just as far along as he could possibly get ; he 
succeeded because of, and not in spite of, his 
moral shortcomings ; if he had always governed 
his actions by a high moral standard he would 
probably never have been heard of. Still, there 
is some comfort in reflecting that, exactly as he 
was made president for no virtue of his own, 
but simply on account of being Jackson's heir, 
so he was turned out of the office, not for per- 



188 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

sonal failure, but because he was taken as 
scapegoat, and had the sins of his political 
fathers visited on his own head. 

The opposition to the election of Van Buren 
was very much disorganized, the Whig party 
not yet having solidified, — indeed it always 
remained a somewhat fluid body. The election 
did not have the slightest sectional significance, 
slavery not entering into it, and both Northern 
and Southern States voting without the least 
reference to the geographical belongings of the 
candidates. He was the last true Jacksonian 
Democrat — Union Democrat — who became 
president ; the South Carolina separatists and 
many of their fellows refused to vote for him. 
The Democrats who came after him, on the 
contrary, all had leanings to the separatist ele- 
ment which so soon obtained absolute control 
of the party, to the fierce indignation of men 
like Benton, Houston, and the other old Jack- 
sonians, whose sincere devotion to the Union 
will always entitle them to the gratitude of 
every true American. As far as slavery was 
concerned, however, the Southerners had hith- 
erto had nothing whatever to complain of in 
Van Buren's attitude. He was careful to in- 
form them in his inaugural address that he 
would not sanction any attempt to interfere 
with the institution, whether by abolishing it in 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 189 

the District of Columbia or in any other way 
distasteful to the South. He also expressed a 
general hope that he would be able throughout 
to follow in the footsteps of Jackson. 

He had hardly been elected before the ruinous 
financial policy to which he had been party, but 
of which the effects, it must in justice be said, 
were aggravated by many of the actions of the 
Whigs, began to bear fruit after its kind. The 
use made of the surplus was bad enough, but 
the withdrawal of the United States deposits 
from one responsible bank and their distribu- 
tion among scores of others, many of which 
were in the most rickety condition, was a step 
better calculated than any other to bring about 
a financial crash. It gave a stimulus to extrav- 
agance, and evoked the wildest spirit of specu- 
lation that the country had yet seen. The local 
banks, to whom the custody of the public mon- 
eys had been intrusted, used them as funds 
which they and their customers could hazard 
for the chance of gain ; and the gambling spirit, 
always existent in the American mercantile 
community, was galvanized into furious life. 
The public dues were payable in the paper of 
these deposit banks and of the countless others 
that were even more irresponsible. The de- 
posit banks thus became filled up with a motley 
mass of more or less worthless bank paper, 



190 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

which thus formed the "surplus,' 1 of which the 
distribution had caused Congress so much worry. 
Their condition was desperate, as they had been 
managed with the most reckless disregard for 
the morrow. Many of them had hardly kept 
as much specie in hand as would amount to 
one fiftieth of the aggregate of their deposits 
and other immediate liabilities. 

The people themselves were of course prima- 
rily responsible for the then existing state of 
affairs ; but the government had done all in its 
power to make matters worse. Panics were 
certain to occur more or less often in so specu- 
lative and venturesome a mercantile commu- 
nity, where there was such heedless trust in the 
future and such recklessness in the use of 
credit. But the government, by its actions, im- 
mensely increased the severity of this particu- 
lar panic, and became the prime factor in pre- 
cipitating its advent. Benton tried to throw 
the blame mainly on the bankers and politi- 
cians, who, he alleged, had formed an alliance 
for the overthrow of the administration ; but 
he made the plea more half-heartedly than 
usual, and probably in his secret soul acknowl- 
edged its puerilit}^. 

The mass of the people were still happy in 
the belief that all things were working well, 
and that their show of unexampled prosperity 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 191 

and business activity denoted a permanent and 
healthy condition. Yet all the signs pointed , 
to a general collapse at no distant date ; an era 
of general bank suspensions, of depreciated 
currency, and of insolvency of the federal treas- 
ury was at hand. No one but Benton, how- 
ever, seemed able to read the signs aright, and 
his foreboding utterances were laughed at or 
treated with scorn by his fellow statesmen. 
He recalled the memory of the times of 1818- 
19, when the treasury reports of one year 
showed a superfluity of revenue of which there 
was no want, and those of the next showed a 
deficit which required to be relieved by a loan ; 
and he foretold an infinitely worse result from 
the inflation of the paper system, saying : — 

Are we not at this moment, and from the same 
cause, realizing the first part — the elusive and 
treacherous part — of this picture? and must not the 
other, the sad and real sequel, speedily follow ? The 
day of revulsion in its effects may be more or less 
disastrous ; but come it must. The present bloat in 
the paper system cannot continue ; violent contrac- 
tion must follow enormous expansion ; a scene of dis- 
tress and suffering must ensue — to come of itself out 
of the present state of things, without being stimulated 
aDd helped on by our unwise legislation. . . . iam 
one of those who promised gold, not paper ; 1 did 
not join in putting down the Bank of the United 



192 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

States to pat up a wilderness of local banks. I did 
not join in putting down the currency of a national 
bank to put up a national paper currency of a thou- 
sand local banks. I did not strike Caesar to make 
Antony master of Rome. 

These last sentences referred to the passage 
of the act repealing the specie circular and 
making the notes of the banks receivable in pay- 
ment of federal dues. The act was most mis- 
chievous, and Benton's criticisms both of it and 
of the great Whig senator who pressed it were 
perfectly just ; but they apply with quite as 
much weight to Jackson's dealings with the de- 
posits, which Benton had defended. 

Benton foresaw the coming of the panic so 
clearly, and was so particularly uneasy about the 
immediate effects upon the governmental treas- 
ury, that he not only spoke publicly on the mat- 
ter in the Senate, but even broached the subject 
in the course of a private conversation with the 
president-elect, to get him to try to make what 
preparations he could. Van Buren, cool, skill- 
ful, and far-sighted politician though he was, on 
this occasion showed that he was infected with 
the common delusion as to the solidity of the 
country's business prosperity. He was very 
friendly with Benton, and was trying to get 
him to take a position in his cabinet, which the 
latter refused, preferring service in the Senate ; 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 193 

but now he listened with scant courtesy to the 
warning, and paid no heed to it. Benton, an in- 
tensely proud man, would not speak again ; and 
everything went on as before. The law distrib- 
uting the surplus among the states began to take 
effect ; under its operations drafts for millions 
of dollars were made on the banks containing 
the deposits, and these banks, already sinking, 
were utterly unable to honor them. It would 
have been impossible, under any circumstances, 
for the president to ward off the blow, but he 
might at least, by a little forethought and prep- 
aration, have saved the government from some 
galling humiliations. Had Benton's advice been 
followed, the moneys called for by the appro- 
priation acts might have been drawn from the 
banks, and the disbursing officers might have 
been prevented from depositing in them the 
sums which they drew from the treasury to 
provide for their ordinary expenses ; thus the 
government would have been spared the dis- 
grace of being obliged to stop the actual daily 
payments to the public servants ; and the na- 
tion would not have seen such a spectacle as its 
rulers presented when they had not a dollar 
with which to pay even a day laborer, while at 
the same time a law was standing on the stat- 
ute-book providing for the distribution of forty 
millions of nominal surplus. 

13 



194 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

No effort was made to stave off even so much 
of the impending disaster as was at that late 
date preventable ; and a few days after Van 
Buren's inauguration the country was in the 
throes of the worst and most widespread finan- 
cial panic it has ever seen. The distress was 
fairly appalling both in its intensity and in its 
universal distribution. All the banks stopped 
payment, and bankruptcy was universal. Bank 
paper depreciated with frightful rapidity, espe- 
cially in the West ; specie increased in value so 
that all the coin in the country, down to the 
lowest denomination, was almost immediately 
taken out of circulation, being either hoarded, 
or gathered for shipment abroad as bullion. 
For small change every kind of device was made 
use of, — tokens, bank-bills for a few cents each, 
or brass and iron counters. 

Benton and others pretended to believe that 
the panic was the result of a deep-laid plot on 
the part of the rich classes, who controlled the 
banks, to excite popular hostility against the 
Jacksonian Democracy, on account of the caste 
antagonism which these same richer classes were 
supposed to feel towards the much -vaunted 
" party of the people ; " and as Benton's mental 
vision was singularly warped in regard to some 
subjects, it is possible that the belief was not al- 
together a pretense. It is entirely unnecessary 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 195 

now seriously to discuss the proposition that it 
would be possible to drag the commercial classes 
into so widespread and profoundly secret a con- 
spiracy, with such a vague end in view, and 
with the certainty that they themselves would 
be, from a business stand-point, the main suf- 
ferers. 

The efforts made by Benton and the other 
Jacksonians to stem the tide of public feeling 
and direct it through the well- worn channel of 
suspicious fear of, and anger at, the banks, as 
the true authors of the general wretchedness, 
were unavailing ; the stream swelled into a tor- 
rent and ran like a mill-race in the opposite 
way. The popular clamor against the admin- 
istration was deafening ; and if much of it was 
based on good grounds, much of it was also un- 
reasonable. But a very few years before the 
Jacksonians had appealed to a senseless public 
dislike of the so-called " money power," in order 
to help themselves to victory ; and now they 
had the chagrin of seeing an only less irrational 
outcry raised against themselves in turn, and 
used to oust them from their places, with the 
same effectiveness which had previously at- 
tended their own frothy and loud-mouthed dec- 
lamations. The people were more than ready 
to listen to any one who could point out, or 
pretend to point out, the authors of, and the 



196 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

reasons for, the calamities that had befallen 
them. Their condition was pitiable ; and this 
was especially true in the newer and Western 
states, where in many places there was abso- 
lutely no money at all in circulation, even the 
men of means not being able to get enough coin 
or its equivalent to make the most ordinary pur- 
chases. Trade was at a complete stand-still ; 
laborers were thrown out of employment and left 
almost starving; farmers, merchants, mechanics, 
craftsmen of every sort, — all alike were in the 
direst distress. They naturally, in seeking re- 
lief, turned to the government, it being almost 
always the case that the existing administration 
receives more credit if the country is prosperous, 
and greater blame if it is not, than in either 
case it is rightfully entitled to. The Democracy 
was now held to strict reckoning, not only for 
some of its numerous real sins but also for a 
good many imaginary ones ; and the change in 
the political aspect of many of the common- 
wealths was astounding. Jackson's own home 
State of Tennessee became strongly Whig ; and 
Van Buren had the mortification of seeing New 
York follow suit ; two stinging blows to the 
president and the ex-president. The distress 
was a godsend to the Whig politicians. They 
fairly raved in their anger against the adminis- 
tration, and denounced all its acts, good and 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 197 

bad alike, with fluent and incoherent impar- 
tiality. Indeed, in their speeches, and in the 
petitions which they circulated and then sent to 
the president, they used language that was to 
the last degree absurd in its violence and ex- 
aggeration, and drew descriptions of the iniqui- 
ties of the rulers of the country which were so 
overwrought as to be merely ridiculous. The 
speeches about the panic, and in reference to 
the proposed laws to alleviate it, were remark- 
able for their inflation, even in that age of windy 
oratory. 

Van Buren, Benton, and their associates stood 
bravely up against the storm of indignation 
which swept over the whole country, and lost 
neither head nor nerve. They needed botli to 
extricate themselves with any credit from the 
position in which they were placed. In defer- 
ence to the urgent wish of almost all the people 
an extra session of Congress was called especially 
to deal with the panic. Van Buren's message to 
this body was a really statesmanlike document, 
going exhaustively into the subject of the na- 
tional finances. The Democrats still held the 
majority in both houses, but there was so large 
a floating vote, and the margins were so nar- 
row, as to make the administration feel that its 
hold was precarious. 

The first thing to be done was to provide for 



198 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the immediate wants of the government, which 
had not enough money to pay even its most 
necessary running expenses. To make this 
temporary provision two plans were proposed. 
The fourth instalment of the surplus — ten 
millions — was due to the states. As there was 
really no surplus, but a deficit instead, it was 
proposed to repeal the deposit law so far as it 
affected their fourth payment ; and treasury 
notes were to be issued to provide for immedi- 
ate and pressing needs. 

The Whigs frantically attacked the presi- 
dent's proposals, and held him and his party 
accountable for all the evils of the panic ; and 
in truth it was right enough to hold them so ac- 
countable for part ; but, after all, the harm was 
largely due to causes existing throughout the 
civilized world, and especially to the specula- 
tive folly rife among the whole American peo- 
ple. But it is always an easy and a comfort- 
able thing to hold others responsible for what 
is primarily our own fault. 

Benton did not believe, as a matter of prin- 
ciple, in the issue of treasury notes, but sup- 
ported the bill for that purpose on account of 
the sore straits the administration was in, and 
its dire need of assistance from an} r source. He 
treated it as a disagreeable but temporary 
makeshift, only allowable on the ground of the 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 199 

sternest and most grinding necessity, He stated 
that lie supported the issue only because the 
treasury notes were made out in such a form 
that they could not become currency ; they 
were merely loan notes. Their chief character- 
istic was that they bore interest ; they were 
transferable only by indorsement ; were paya- 
ble at a fixed time ; were not reissuable, nor of 
small denominations ; and were to be canceled 
when paid. Such being the case he favored 
their issue, but expressly stated that he only 
did so on account of the urgency of the govern- 
mental wants; and that he disapproved of any 
such issue until the ordinary resources of taxes 
and loans had been tried to the utmost and 
failed. " I distrust, dislike, and would fain es- 
chew this treasury-note resource ; I prefer the 
direct loans of 1820-21. I could only bring 
myself to support this present measure when it 
was urged that there was not time to carry a 
loan through in its forms ; nor even then would 
I consent to it until every feature of a currency 
character had been eradicated from the bill." 

A sharp struggle took place over the bill 
brought in by the friends of the administration 
and advocated by Benton, to repeal the obliga- 
tion to deposit the fourth instalment of the sur- 
plus with the states. This scheme of a distribu- 
tion, thinly disguised under the name of deposit 



200 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

to soothe the feelings of Calhoun and the other 
strict constructionist pundits, had worked noth- 
ing but mischief from the start ; and now that 
there was no surplus to distribute, it would seem 
incredible that there should have been opposi- 
tion to its partial repeal. Yet Webster, Clay, 
and their followers strenuously opposed even 
such repeal. It is possible that their motives 
were honest, but much more probable that they 
were actuated by partisan hostility to the ad- 
ministration, or that they believed they would 
increase their own popularity by favoring a plan 
that seemingly distributed money as a gift 
among the states. The bill was finally amended 
so as to make it imperative to pay this fourth 
instalment in a couple of years ; yet it was not 
then paid, since on the date appointed the na- 
tional treasury was bankrupt and the states could 
therefore never get the money, — which was the 
only satisfactory incident in the whole proceed- 
ing. The financial theories of Jackson and 
Benton were crude and vicious, it is true, but 
Webster, Clay, and most other public men of 
the day seem to have held ideas on the subject 
that were almost, if not quite, as mischievous. 

The great financial measures advocated by the 
administration of Van Buren, and championed 
with especial zeal by Benton, were those pro- 
viding for an independent treasury and for 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 201 

hard-money payments ; that is, providing that 
the government should receive nothing but gold 
and silver for its revenues, and that this gold 
and silver should be kept by its own officers in 
real, not constructive, treasuries, — in strong 
buildings, with special officers to hold the keys. 
The treasury was to be at Washington, with 
branches or sub-treasuries at the principal points 
of collection and disbursement. 

These measures, if successful, meant that 
there would be a total separation of the federal 
government from all banks j in the political 
language of the times they became known as 
those for the divorce of bank and state. Hith- 
erto the local banks chosen by Jackson to re- 
ceive the deposits had been actively hostile to 
Biddle's great bank and to its friends ; but self- 
interest now united them all in violent opposi- 
tion to the new scheme. Webster, Clay, and the 
Whigs generally fought it bitterly in the Sen- 
ate ; but Calhoun now left his recent allies and 
joined with Benton in securing its passage. 
However, it was for the time being defeated in 
the House of Representatives. Most of the op- 
position to it was characterized by sheer loud- 
mouthed demagogy — cries that the govern- 
ment was too aristocratic to accept the money 
that was thought good enough for the people, 
and similar claptrap. Benton made a very 



202 THOMAS I1ART BENTON. 

earnest plea for hard money, and especially de- 
nounced the doctrine that it was the govern- 
ment's duty to interfere in any way in private 
business ; for, as usual in times of general dis- 
tress, a good many people had a vague idea that 
in some way the government ought to step in 
and relieve them from the consequences of their 
own folly. 

Meanwhile the banks had been endeavoring 
to resume specie payment. Those of New York 
had taken steps in that direction but little more 
than three months after the suspension. Their 
weaker Western neighbors, however, were not 
yet in condition to follow suit; and the great 
bank at Philadelphia also at first refused to 
come in with them. But the New York banks 
persisted in their purpose, resumed payment a 
year after they had suspended, and eventually 
the others had to fall into line ; the reluctance 
to do so being of course attributed by Benton 
to " the factious and wicked machinations " of 
a " powerful combined political and moneyed 
confederation " — a shadowy and spectral crea- 
tion of vivid Jacksonian imaginations, in the 
existence of which he persisted in believing. 

Clay, always active as the friend of the banks, 
introduced a resolution, nominally to quicken 
the approach of resumption, but really to help 
out precisely those weak banks which did not 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 203 

deserve help, making the notes of the resuming 
banks receivable in payment of all dues to the 
federal government. This was offered after 
the banks of New York had resumed, and when 
all the other solvent banks were on the point 
of resuming also ; so its nominal purpose was 
already accomplished, as Benton, in a caustic 
speech, pointed out. He then tore the resolu- 
tion to shreds, showing that it would be of espe- 
cial benefit to the insolvent and unsound banks, 
and would insure a repetition of the worst evils 
under which the country was already suffering. 
He made it clear that the proposition practically 
was to force the government to receive paper 
promises to pay from banks that were certain 
to fail, and therefore to force the government 
in turn to pay out this worthless paper to its 
honest creditors. Benton's speech was an ex- 
cellent one, and Clay's resolution was defeated. 
All through this bank controversy, and the 
other controversies relating to it, Benton took 
the leading part, as mouthpiece of the admin- 
istration. He heartily supported the sugges- 
tion of the president, that a stringent bankrupt 
law against the banks should be passed. Web- 
ster stood out as the principal opponent of this 
measure, basing his objections mainly upon con- 
stitutional grounds ; that is, questioning the 
right, rather than the expediency, of the pro- 



204 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

posed remedy. Benton answered him at length 
in a speech showing an immense amount of care- 
ful and painstaking study and a wide range of 
historical reading and legal knowledge ; he re- 
plied point by point, and more than held his 
own with his great antagonist. His speech was 
an exhaustive study of the history and scope 
of bankruptcy laws against corporations. Ben- 
ton's capacity for work was at all times im- 
mense ; he delighted in it for its own sake, and 
took a most justifiable pride in his wide reading, 
and especially in his full acquaintance with his- 
tory, both ancient and modern. He was very 
fond of illustrating his speeches on American 
affairs with continual allusions and references 
to events in foreign countries or in old times, 
which he considered to be more or less parallel 
to those he was discussing ; and indeed he often 
dragged in these comparisons when there was 
no particular need for such a display of his 
knowledge. He could fairly be called a learned 
man, for he had studied very many subjects 
deeply and thoroughly ; and though he was too 
self-conscious and pompous in his utterances 
not to incur more than the suspicion of pedan- 
try, yet the fact remains that hardly any other 
man has ever sat in the Senate whose range of 
information was as wide as his. 

He made another powerful and carefully 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 205 

wrought speech in favor of what he called the 
act to provide for the divorce of bank and 
state. This bill, as finally drawn, consisted of 
two distinct parts, one portion making provision 
for the keeping of the public moneys in an inde- 
pendent treasury, and the other for the hard- 
money currency, which was all that the govern- 
ment was to accept in payment of revenue dues 
This last provision, however, was struck out, and 
the bill thereby lost the support of Calhoun, 
who, with Webster, Clay, and the other Whigs, 
voted against it ; but, mainly through Benton's 
efforts, it passed the Senate, although by a very 
slender majority. Benton, in his speech, dwelt 
with especial admiration on the working of the 
monetary system of France, and held it up as 
well worthy to be copied by us. Most of the 
points he made were certainly good ones, al- 
though he overestimated the beneficent results 
that would spring from the adoption of the pro- 
posed system, believing that it would put an 
end for the future to all panics and commercial 
convulsions. In reality it would have removed 
only one of the many causes which go to pro- 
duce the latter, leaving the others free to work 
as before ; the people at large, not the govern- 
ment, were mainly to blame, and even with 
them it was in some respects their misfortune 
as much as their fault. Benton's error, how- 



206 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

ever, was natural ; like most other men lie was 
unable fully to realize that hardly any phenom- 
enon, even the most simple, can be said to spring 
from one cause only, and not from a complex 
and interwoven tissue of causation — and a 
panic is one of the least simple and most com- 
plex of mercantile phenomena. Benton's deep- 
rooted distrust of and hostility to such banking 
as then existed in the United States certainly 
had good grounds for existence. 

This distrust was shown again when the bill 
for the re-charter of the district banks came up. 
The specie basis of many of them had been al- 
lowed to become altogether too low ; and Ben- 
ton showed himself more keenly alive than any 
other public man to the danger of such a state 
of things, and argued strongly that a basis of 
specie amounting to one third the total of lia- 
bilities was the only safe proportion, and should 
be enforced by law. He made a most forcible 
argument, using numerous and apt illustrations 
to show the need of his amendment. 

Nor was the tireless Missouri senator satisfied 
even yet ; for he introduced a resolution asking 
leave to bring in a bill to tax the circulation of 
banks and bankers, and of all corporations, com- 
panies, or individuals, issuing paper currency. 
One object of the bill was to raise revenue; 
but even more he aimed at the regulation of the 



CHILDREN'S TEETH ARE SET ON EDGE. 207 

currency by the suppression of small notes ; and 
for this end the tax was proposed to be made 
heaviest on notes under twenty dollars, and to be 
annually augmented until it had accomplished 
its object and they had been driven out of cir- 
culation. In advocating his measure he used, 
as w r as perhaps unavoidable, some arguments 
that savored strongly of demagogy; but on the 
whole he made a strong appeal, using as prece- 
dents for the law he wished to see enacted both 
the then existing banking laws in England and 
those that had obtained previously in the his- 
tory of the United States. 

Taken altogether, while the Jacksonians, 
during the period of Van Buren's presidency, 
rightly suffered for their previous financial mis- 
deeds, yet so far as their actions at the time were 
concerned, they showed to greater advantage 
than the Whigs. Nor did they waver in their 
purpose even when the tide of popular feeling 
changed. The great financial measure of the 
administration, in which Benton was most in- 
terested, the independent treasury bill, he suc- 
ceeded in getting through the Senate twice ; the 
first time it was lost in the House of Represen- 
tatives ; but on the second occasion, towards 
the close of Van Buren's term, firmness and per- 
severance met their reward. The bill passed 
the Senate by an increased majority, scraped 



208 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

through the House after a bitter contest, and 
became a law. It developed the system known 
as that of the Sub-Treasury, which has proved 
satisfactory to the present day. 

It was during Van Buren's term that Biddle's 
great bank, so long the pivot on which turned 
the fortunes of political parties, finally tottered 
to its fall. It was ruined by unwise and reck- 
less management; and Benton sang a psean over 
its downfall, exulting in its fate as a justification 
of all that he had said and done. Yet there can 
be little doubt that its mismanagement became 
gross only after all connection with the national 
government had ceased ; and its end, attributa- 
ble to causes not originally existent or likely to 
exist, can hardly be rightly considered in pass- 
ing judgment upon the actions of the Jackso- 
nians in reference to it. 



CHAPTER X. 

LAST DAYS OF THE JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 

The difficulty and duration of a war with an 
Indian tribe depend less upon the numbers of 
the tribe itself than upon the nature of the 
ground it inhabits. The two Indian tribes that 
have caused the most irritating and prolonged 
struggle are the Apaches, who live in the vast, 
waterless, mountainous deserts of Arizona and 
New Mexico, and whom we are at this present 
moment engaged in subduing, and the Semi- 
noles, who, from among the impenetrable 
swamps of Florida, bade the whole United 
States army defiance for seven long years ; and 
this although neither Seminoles nor Apaches 
ever brought much force into the field, nor in- 
flicted such defeats upon us as have other Indian 
tribes, like the Creeks and Sioux. 

The conflict with the Seminoles was one of 
the legacies left by Jackson to Van Buren ; it 
lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost 
thirty millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts 
of several generals and numerous troops, who 

14 



210 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

had previously shown themselves equal to any 
in the world. The expense, length, and ill-suc- 
cess of the struggle, and a strong feeling that 
the Seminoles had been wronged, made it a 
great handle for attack on the administration ; 
and the defense was taken up by Benton, who 
always accepted completely the Western esti- 
mate of any form of the Indian question. 

As is usually the case in Indian wars there 
had been much wrong done by each side ; but 
in this instance we were the more to blame, al- 
though the Indians themselves were far from 
being merely harmless and suffering innocents. 
The Seminoles were being deprived of their 
lands in pursuance of the general policy of re- 
moving all the Indians west of the Mississippi. 
They had agreed to go, under pressure, and in- 
fluenced, probably, by fraudulent representa- 
tions ; but they declined to fulfill their agree- 
ment. If they had been treated wisely and 
firmly they might probably have been allowed 
to remain without serious injury to the sur- 
rounding whites. But no such treatment was 
attempted, and as a result we were plunged in 
one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever 
waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and 
among the unknown and untrodden recesses of 
the everglades the Indians found a secure asy- 
lum ; and they issued from their haunts to burn 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 211 

and ravage almost all the settled part of Florida, 
fairly depopulating five counties ; while the sol- 
diers could rarely overtake them, and when they 
did, were placed at such a disadvantage that the 
Indians repulsed or cut off detachment after 
detachment, generally making a merciless and 
complete slaughter of each. The great Semi- 
nole leader, Osceola, was captured only by de- 
liberate treachery and breach of faith on our 
part, and the Indians were worn out rather than 
conquered. This was partly owing to their re- 
markable capacities as bush-fighters, but infi- 
nitely more to the nature of their territory. 

Our troops generally fought with great 
bravery; but there is very little else in the 
struggle, either as regards its origin or the 
manner in which it was carried on, to which an 
American can look back with any satisfaction. 
We usually group all our Indian wars together, 
in speaking of their justice or injustice ; and 
thereby show flagrant ignorance. The Sioux 
and Cheyennes, for instance, have more often 
been sinning than sinned against; for example, 
the so-called Chivington or Sandy Creek Mas- 
sacre, in spite of certain most objectionable de- 
tails, was on the whole as righteous and benefi- 
cial a deed as ever took place on the frontier. 
On the other hand, the most cruel wrongs 
have been perpetrated by whites upon perfectly 



212 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

peaceable and unoffending tribes like those of 
California, or the Nez Perces. Yet the emascu- 
lated professional humanitarians mourn as much 
over one set of Indians as over the other — and 
indeed, on all points connected with Indian 
management, are as untrustworthy and unsafe 
leaders as would be an equal number of the 
most brutal white borderers. But the Semi- 
nole War was one of those where the Eastern, 
or humanitarian view was more nearly correct 
than was any other ; although even here the 
case was far from being entirely one-sided. 

Benton made an elaborate but not always 
candid defense of the administration, both as to 
the origin and as to the prosecution of the war. 
He attempted to show that the Seminoles had 
agreed to go West, had broken their treaty 
without any reason, had perpetrated causeless 
massacres, had followed up their successes with 
merciless butcheries, which last statement was 
true ; and that Osceola had forfeited all claim 
or right to have a flag of truce protect him. 
There was a certain justice in his position even 
on these questions, and when he came to defend 
the conduct of our soldiers he had the right en- 
tirely with him. They were led by the same 
commander, and belonged to the same regi- 
ments, that in Canada had shown themselves 
equal to the famous British infantry ; they had 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSON/AN DEMOCRACY. 213 

to contend with the country, rather than with 
their enemies, as the sweltering heat, the stag- 
nant lagoons, the quaking morasses, and the 
dense forests of Florida made it almost impos- 
sible for an army to carry on a successful cam- 
paign. Moreover, the Seminoles were well 
armed ; and many tribes of North American 
Indians show themselves, when with good weap- 
ons and on their own ground, more dangerous 
antagonists than would be an equal number of 
the best European troops. Indeed, under such 
conditions they can only be contended with on 
equal terms if the opposing white force is made 
up of frontiersmen who are as good woodsmen 
and riflemen as themselves, and who, moreover, 
have been drilled by some man like Jackson, 
who knows how to handle them to the best ad- 
vantage, both in disciplining their lawless cour- 
age and in forcing them to act under orders 
and together, — the lack of which discipline and 
power of supporting each other has often ren- 
dered an assemblage of formidable individual 
border -fighters a mere disorderly mob when 
brought into the field. 

The war dragged on tediously. The troops — 
regulars, volunteers, and militia alike — fought 
the Indians again and again ; there were pitched 
battles, surprises, ambuscades, and assaults on 
places of unknown strength; hundreds of sol- 



214 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

diers were slain in battle or by treachery ; 
hundreds of settlers were slaughtered in their 
homes, or as they fled from them ; the bloody 
Indian forays reached even to the outskirts of 
Tallahatchee and to within sight of the walls of 
quaint old St. Augustine. Little by little, how- 
ever, the power of the Seminoles was broken ; 
their war bands were scattered and driven from 
the field, hundreds of their number were slain 
in fight, and five times as many surrendered 
and were taken west of the Mississippi. The 
white troops marched through Florida down to 
and into the everglades, and crossed it back- 
wards and forwards, from the Gulf of Mexico 
to the Atlantic Ocean ; they hunted their foes 
from morass to morass and from hummock to 
hummock ; they mapped out the whole hitherto 
unknown country; they established numerous 
posts ; opened hundreds of miles of wagon road ; 
and built very many causeways and bridges. 
But they could not end the war. The bands of 
Indians broke up and entirely ceased to offer 
resistance to bodies of armed whites ; but as 
individuals they continued as dangerous to the 
settlers as ever, prowling out at night like wild 
beasts from their fastnesses in the dark and 
fetid swamps, murdering, burning, and ravag- 
ing in all the outlying settlements, and destroy. 
ing every lonely farm-house or homestead. 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSON FAN DEMOCRACY. 215 

There was but one way in which the war 
could be finally ended, and that* was to have 
the territory occupied by armed settlers ; in 
other words, to have it won and held exactly 
as almost all the land of the United States has 
been in the beginning. Benton introduced a 
bill to bring this about, giving to every such 
settler a good inheritance in the soil as a reward 
for his enterprise, toil, and danger : and the 
w T ar was finished only by the adoption of this 
method. He supported his bill in a very effec- 
tive speech, showing that the proposed way was 
the only one by which a permanent conquest 
could be effected ; he himself had, when young, 
seen it put into execution in Tennessee and 
Kentucky, where the armed settlers, with their 
homesteads in the soil, formed the vanguard of 
the white advance: where the rifle -bearing 
backwoodsmen went forth to fight and to culti- 
vate, living in assemblages of block-houses at 
first and separating into individual settlements 
afterwards. The work had to be done with axe, 
spade, and rifle alike. Benton rightly insisted 
that there was no longer need of a large army 
in Florida : — 

Why, the men who are there now' can find nobody 
to fight! It is two years since a fight has been had. 
Ten men who will avoid surprises and ambuscades can 
now go from one end of Florida to the other. As* 



216 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

warriors, these Indians no longer appear ; it is only 
as assassins, as* robbers, as incendiaries, that they lurk 
about. What is now wanted is not an army to fight, 
but settlers and cultivators to take possession and 
keep possession ; and the armed cultivator is the man 
for that. The block-house is the first house to be 
built in an Indian country ; the stockade the first 
fence to be put up. Within that block -house, or 
within a hollow square of block-houses, two miles 
long on each side, two hundred yards apart, and in- 
closing a good field, safe habitations are to be found 
for families. Cultivation and defense then go hand in 
hand. The heart of the Indian sickens when he hears 
the crowing of the cock, the barking of the dog, the 
sound of the axe, and the crack of the rifle. These 
are the true evidences of the dominion of the white 
man ; these are the proofs that the owner has come 
and means to stay, and then the Indians feel it to be 
time for them to go. While soldiers alone are in 
the country they feel their presence to be temporary ; 
that they are mere sojourners in the land, and sooner 
or later must go away. It is the settler alone, the 
armed settler, whose presence announces the domin- 
ion, the permanent dominion, of the white man. 

Benton's ideas were right, and were acted 
upon. It is impossible even to subdue an 
Indian tribe by the army alone ; the latter can 
only pave the way for and partially protect 
the armed settlers who are to hold the soil. 
i Benton continued to take a great interest in 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 217 

the disposal of the public lands, as was natural 
in a senator from the West, where the balk of 
these lands lay. He was always a great advo- 
cate of a homestead law. During Van Buren's 
administration, he succeeded in getting two or 
three bills on the subject through the Senate. 
One of these allowed lands that had been five 
years in the market to be reduced in price to a 
dollar an acre, and if they stood five years longer 
to go down to seventy-five cents. The bill was 
greatly to the interest of the Western farmer in 
the newer, although not necessarily the newest, 
parts of the country. The man who went on 
the newest land was in turn provided for by the 
preemption bill, which secured the privilege of 
first purchase to the actual settler on any lands 
to which the Indian title had been extinguished ; 
to be paid for at the minimum price of public 
lands at the time. An effort was made to con- 
fine the benefits of this proposed law to citi- 
zens of the United States, excluding unnatu- 
ralized foreigners from its action. Benton, as 
representing the new states, who desired immi- 
grants of every kind, whether foreign or native, 
successfully opposed this. He pointed out that 
there was no question of conferring political 
rights, which involved the management of the 
government, and which should not be conferred 
until the foreigner had become a naturalized 



218 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

citizen ; it was merely a question of allowing the 
alien a right to maintain himself and to support 
his family. He especially opposed the amend- 
ment on account of the class of foreigners it 
would affect. Aliens who wished to take up 
public lands were not paupers or criminals, and 
did not belong to the shiftless and squalid for- 
eign mob that drifted into the great cities of the 
seaboard and the interior ; but on the contrary 
were among our most enterprising, hardy, and 
thrifty citizens, who had struck out for them- 
selves into the remote parts of the new states 
and had there begun to bring the wilderness 
into subjection. Such men deserved to be en- 
couraged in every way, and should receive from 
the preemption laws the same benefits that 
would enure to native-born citizens. The third 
bill introduced, which passed the Senate but 
failed in the House, was one to permit the pub- 
lic lands sold to be immediately taxed by the 
states in which they lay. Originally these lands 
had been sold upon credit, the total amount not 
being paid, nor the title passed, until five years 
after the sale ; and during this time it would 
have been unjust to tax them, as failure in pay- 
ing the installments to the government would 
have let the lands revert to the latter; but 
when the cash system was substituted for credit 
Benton believed that there was no longer reason 



LAST DAYS OF JACKS0N1AN DEMOCRACY. 219 

why the new lands should not bear their share 
of the state burdens. 

During Van Buren's administration the stand- 
ard of public honesty, which had been lowering 
with frightful rapidity ever since, with Adams, 
the men of high moral tone had gone out of 
power, went almost as far down as it could go ; 
although things certainly did not change for the 
better under Tyler and Polk. Not only was 
there the most impudent and unblushing rascal- 
ity among the public servants of the nation, but 
the people themselves, through their representa- 
tives in the state legislatures, went to work to 
swindle their honest creditors. Many states, 
in the rage for public improvements, had con- 
tracted debts which they now refused to pay ; 
in many cases they were unable, or at least so 
professed themselves, even to pay the annual 
interest. The debts of the states were largely 
held abroad ; they had been converted into 
stock and held in shares, which had gone into 
a great number of hands, and now, of course, 
became greatly depreciated in value. It is a 
painful and shameful page in our history ; and 
every man connected with the repudiation of 
the states' debts ought, if remembered at all, to 
be remembered only with scorn and contempt. 
However, time has gradually shrouded from our 
sight both the names of the leaders in the re- 



220 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

pudiation and the names of the victims whom 
they swindled. Two alone, one in each class, 
will always be kept in mind. Before Jefferson 
Davis took his place among the arch-traitors in 
our annals he had already long been known as 
one of the chief repudiators ; it was not unnat- 
ural that to dishonesty towards the creditors of 
the public he should afterwards add treachery 
towards the public itself. The one most pro- 
minent victim was described by Benton himself: 
"The Reverend Sydney Smith, of witty memory, 
but amiable withal, was accustomed to lose all 
his amiability, but no part of his wit, when he 
spoke of his Pennsylvania bonds — which, in 
fact, was very often." 

Many of the bond-holders, however, did not 
manifest their grief by caustic wit, but looked 
to more substantial relief ; and did their best to 
bring about the assumption of the state debts, 
in some form, whether open or disguised, by the 
federal government. The British capitalists 
united with many American capitalists to work 
for some such action ; and there were plenty of 
people in the states willing enough to see it 
done. Of course it would have been criminal 
folly on the part of the federal government to 
take any such step ; and Benton determined to 
meet and check the effort at the very beginning. 
The London Bankers' Circular had contained 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 221 

a proposition recommending that the Congress 
of the United States should guarantee, or other- 
wise provide for, the ultimate payment of the 
debts which the states had contracted for state 
or local purposes. Benton introduced a series 
of resolutions declaring utter opposition to the 
proposal, both on the ground of expediency and 
on that of constitutionality. The resolutions 
were perfectly proper in their purpose, but were 
disfigured by that cheap species of demagogy 
which consists in denouncing purely suppositi- 
tious foreign interference, complicated by an 
allusion to Benton's especial pet terror, the in- 
evitable money power. As he put it : "Foreign 
interference and influence are far more danger- 
ous in the invidious intervention of the mon- 
eyed power than in the forcible invasions of 
fleets and armies." 

An attempt was made directly to reverse the 
effect of the resolutions by amending them so as 
to provide that the public land revenue should 
be divided among the states, to help them in 
the payment of these debts. Both Webster and 
Clay supported this amendment, but it was for- 
tunately beaten by a large vote. 

Benton's speech, like the resolutions in sup- 
port of which he spoke, was right in its purpose, 
but contained much matter that was beside the 
mark. He had worked himself into such a con- 



222 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

dition over the supposititious intrigues of the 
"money power" — an attack on which is al- 
most always sure to be popular — that he was 
very certain to discover evidence of their exist- 
ence on all, even the most unlikely, occasions; 
and it is difficult to think that he was not him- 
self aware how overdrawn was his prophecy of 
the probable interference of foreign powers in 
our affairs, if the resolutions he had presented 
were not adopted. 

The tariff had once more begun to give 
trouble, and the South was again complaining 
of its workings, aware that she was falling al- 
ways more to the rear in the race for prosperity, 
and blindly attributing her failure to everything 
but the true reason, — the existence of slavery. 
Even Benton himself showed a curiously pa- 
thetic eagerness to prove both to others and him- 
self that the cause of the increasing disparity in 
growth, and incompatibility in interest between 
the two sections, must be due to some tempo- 
rary and artificial cause, and endeavored to hide 
from all eyes, even from his own, the fact that 
the existence of slavery was working, slowly 
but surely, and with steadily increasing rapid- 
ity, to rend in sunder the Union which he loved 
and served with such heartfelt devotion. He 
tried to prove that the main cause of discontent 
was to be found in the tariff and other laws, 



LAST DAYS OF JACK SON I AN DEMOCRACY. 223 

which favored the North at the expense of the 
South. At the same time he entered an elo- 
quent plea for a warmer feeling between the 
sections, and pointed out the absolute hopeless- 
ness of attempting to better the situation in 
any way by disunion. The great Missourian 
could look back with fond pride and regret to 
the condition of the South as it was during and 
immediately after the colonial days, when it 
was the seat of wealth, power, high living, and 
free-handed hospitality, and was filled to over- 
flowing with the abounding life of its eager and 
turbulent sons. The change for the worse in 
its relative condition was real and great. He 
reproved his fellow-Southerners for attributing 
this change to a single cause, the unequal work- 
ing of the federal government, " which gave all 
the benefits of the Union to the South and all 
its burdens to the North ; " he claimed that it 
was due to many other causes as well. Yet 
those whom he rebuked were as near right as 
he was ; for the change was due in the main to 
only one cause — but that cause was slavery. 
It is almost pitiful to see the strong, stern, self- 
reliant statesman refusing, with nervous and 
passionate willfulness, to look the danger in 
the face, and, instead thereof, trying to per- 
suade himself into the belief that " the remedy 
lies in the right working of the Constitution ; 



224 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

in the cessation of unequal legislation ; in the 
reduction of the inordinate expenses of the gov- 
ernment ; in its return to the simple, limited, 
and 'economical machine it was intended to be ; 
and in the revival of fraternal feelings and re- 
spect for each other's rights and just com- 
plaints." Like many another man he thought, 
or tried to think, that by sweeping the dust 
from the door-sill he could somehow stave off 
the whirling rush of the sand-storm. 

The compromise tariff of 1833 had abolished 
all specific duties, establishing ad valorem ones 
in their place ; and the result had been great 
uncertainty and injustice in its working. Now 
whether a protective tariff is right or wrong 
may be open to question ; but if it exists at 
all, it should work as simply and with as much 
certainty and exactitude as possible ; if its in- 
terpretation varies, or if it is continually med- 
dled with by Congress, great damage ensues. 
It is in reality of far less importance that a law 
should be ideally right than that it should be 
certain and steady in its workings. Even sup- 
posing that a high tariff is all wrong, it would 
work infinitely better for the country than would 
a series of changes between high and low duties. 
Benton strongly advocated a return to specific 
duties, as being simpler, surer, and better on 
every account. In commenting on the ad va- 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 225 

lor em duties, he showed how they had been 
adopted blindly and without discussion by the 
frightened, silent multitude of congressmen and 
senators, who jumped at Clay's compromise bill 
in 1833 as giving them a loop-hole of escape 
from a situation where they would have had to 
face evil consequences, no matter what stand 
they took. Benton's comment on men of this 
stamp deserves chronicling, from its justice and 
biting severity : " It (the compromise act) was 
passed by the aid of the votes of those — always 
a considerable per centum in every public body 
— to whom the name of compromise is an irre- 
sistible attraction ; amiable men, who would do 
no wrong of themselves, and without whom the 
designing could also do but little wrong." 

He not only devoted himself to the general 
subject of the tariff in relation to specific duties, 
but he also took up several prominent abuses. 
One subject, on which he was never tired of 
harping with monotonous persistency, was the 
duty on salt. The idea of making salt free had 
become one which he was almost as fond of 
bringing into every discussion, no matter how 
inappropiate to the matter in hand, as he was 
of making irrelevant and abusive allusions to 
his much - enduring and long-suffering hobby, 
the iniquitous "money power." Benton had all 
the tenacity of a snapping turtle, and was as 

15 



226 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

firm a believer in the policy of " continuous 
hammering " as Grant himself. His tenacity and 
his pertinacious refusal to abandon any contest, 
no matter what the odds were against him, and 
no matter how often he had to return to the 
charge, formed two of his most invaluable qual- 
ities, and when called into play on behalf of 
such an object as the preservation of the Union, 
cannot receive too high praise at our hands ; for 
they did the country services so great and last- 
ing that they should never be forgotten. It 
would have been fortunate indeed if Clay and 
Webster had possessed the fearless, aggressive 
courage and iron will of the rugged Missourian, 
who was so often pitted against them in the 
political arena. But when Benton's attention 
was firmly fixed on the accomplishment of some- 
thing comparatively trivial, his dogged, stub- 
born, and unyielding earnestness drew him into 
making efforts of which the disproportion to 
the result aimed at was rather droll. Nothing 
could thwart him or turn him aside ; and though 
slow to take up an idea, yet, if it was once in 
his head, to drive it out was a simply hopeless 
task. These qualities were of such invaluable 
use to the state on so many great occasions that 
we can well afford to treat them merely with a 
good-humored laugh, whtn we see them exer- 
cised on behalf of such a piece of foolishness 
as, for example, the expunging resolution. 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 227 

The repeal of the salt tax, then, was a partic- 
ular favorite in Benton's rather numerous stable 
of hobbies, because it gave free scope for the 
use of sentimental as well as of economic argu- 
ments. He had the right of the question, and 
was not in the least daunted by his numerous 
rebuffs and the unvarying ill success of his ef- 
forts. Speaking in 1840, he stated that he had 
been urging the repeal for twelve years; and 
for the purpose of furnishing data with which 
to compare such a period of time, and without 
the least suspicion that there was anything out 
of the way in the comparison, he added, in a 
solemn parenthesis, that this was two years 
longer than the siege of Troy lasted. In the 
same speech was a still choicer morsel of elo- 
quence about salt : " The Supreme Ruler of the 
Universe has done everything to supply his 
creatures with it ; man, the fleeting shadow of 
an instant, invested with his little brief author- 
ity, has done much to deprive them of it." 
After which he went on to show a really ex- 
tensive acquaintance with the history of salt 
taxes and monopolies, and with the uses and 
physical structure and surroundings of the min- 
eral itself — all which might have taught his 
hearers that a man may combine much erudi- 
tion with a total lack of the sense of humor. 
The salt tax is dragged, neck and heels, into 



228 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

many of Benton's speeches much as Cooper 
manages, on all possible occasions, throughout 
his novels, to show the unlikeness of the Bay 
of Naples to the Bay of New York — not the 
only point of resemblance, by the way, between 
the characters of the Missouri statesman and 
the New York novelist. Whether the subject 
under discussion w T as the taxation of bank-notes, 
or the abolition of slavery, made very little dif- 
ference to Benton as to introducing an allusion 
to the salt monopoly. One of his happy argu- 
ments in favor of the repeal, which was ad- 
dressed to an exceedingly practical and com- 
monplace Congress, was that the early Chris- 
tian disciples had been known as the salt of 
the earth — a biblical metaphor, which Benton 
kindly assured his hearers was very expressive ; 
and added that a salt tax was morally as well 
as politically wrong, and in fact u was a species 
of impiety." 

But in attacking some of the abuses which 
had developed out of the tariff of 1833 Benton 
made a very shrewd and practical speech, with- 
out permitting himself to indulge in any such 
intellectual pranks as accompanied his salt ora- 
tions. He especially aimed at reducing the 
drawbacks on sugar, molasses, and one or two 
other articles. In accordance with our whole 
clumsy, hap-hazard system of dealing with the 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 229 

tariff we had originally put very high duties on 
the articles in question, and then had allowed 
correspondingly heavy drawbacks ; and yet, 
when in 1833, by Clay's famous compromise 
tariff bill, the duties were reduced to a frac- 
tional part of what they had previously been, 
no parallel reduction was made in the draw- 
backs, although Benton (supported by Web- 
ster) made a vain effort even then, while the 
compromise bill was on its passage, to have the 
injustice remedied. As a consequence, the ex- 
porters of sugar and rum, instead of drawing 
back the exact amounts paid into the treasury, 
drew back several times as much ; and the ri- 
diculous result was. that certain exporters were 
paid a naked bounty out of the treasury, and 
received pay for doing and suffering nothing. 
In 1839 the drawback paid on the exportation 
of refined sugar exceeded the amount of revenue 
derived from imported sugar by over twenty 
thousand dollars. Benton showed this clearly, 
by unimpeachable statistics, and went on to 
prove that in that year the whole amount of 
the revenue from brown and clayed sugar, plus 
the above-mentioned twenty thousand dollars, 
was paid over to twenty-nine sugar refiners ; 
and that these men thus " drew back " from 
the treasury what they had never put into it. 
Abuses equally gross existed in relation to va- 



230 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

rious other articles. But in spite of the clear 
justice of his case Benton was able at first to 
make but little impression on Congress ; and 
it was some time before matters were straight- 
ened out, as all the protective interests felt 
obliged to make common cause with each other, 
no matter what evils might be perpetrated by 
their taking such action. 

Towards the close of Van Buren's administra- 
tion, when he was being assailed on every side, 
as well for what Jackson as for what he himself 
had done or left undone, one of the chief accu- 
sations brought against him was that he had 
squandered the public money, and that, since 
Adams had been ousted fnom the presidency, 
the expenses of running the government had 
increased out of all proportion to what was 
proper. There was good ground for their com- 
plaint, as the waste and peculation in some of 
the departments had been very great ; but Ben- 
ton, in an elaborate defense of both Jackson 
and Van Buren, succeeded in showing that at 
least certain of the accusations were unfounded 
— although he had to stretch a point or two in 
trying to make good his claim that the admin- 
istration was really economical, being reduced 
to the rather lame expedient of ruling out about 
two thirds of tlie expenditures on the ground 
that they were " extraordinary." 



LAST DAYS OF JACKS ON IAN DEMOCRACY. 231 

The charge of extravagance was one of the 
least of the charges urged against the Jackson ian 
Democrats during the last days of their rule. 
While they had been in power the character of 
the public service had deteriorated frightfully, 
both as regarded its efficiency and infinitely 
more as regarded its honesty ; and under Van 
Buren the amount of money stolen by the pub- 
lic officers, compared to the amount handed in 
to the treasury, was greater than ever before 
or since. For this the Jacksonians were solely 
and absolutely responsible ; they drove out the 
merit system of making appointments, and in- 
troduced the " spoils " system in its place ; and 
under the latter they chose a peculiarly dis- 
honest and incapable set of officers, whose sole 
recommendation was to be found in the knav- 
ish trickery and low cunning that enabled them 
to manage the ignorant voters who formed the 
backbone of Jackson's party. The statesmen 
of the Democracy in after days forgot the good 
deeds of the Jacksonians ; they lost their at- 
tachment to the Union, and abandoned their 
championship of hard money ; but they never 
ceased to cling to the worst legacy their prede- 
cessors had left them. The engrafting of the 
" spoils " system on our government was, of all 
the results of Jaeksonian rule, the one which 
was most permanent in its effects. 



232 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

All these causes — the corruption of the pub- 
lic officials, the extravagance of the govern- 
ment, and the widespread distress, which might 
be regarded as the aftermath of its ruinous 
financial policy — combined with others that 
were as little to the discredit of the Jackso- 
nians as they were to the credit of the Whigs, 
brought about the overthrow of the former. 
There was much poetic justice in the fact that 
the presidential election which decided their 
fate was conducted on as purely irrational prin- 
ciples, and was as merely one of sound and 
fury, as had been the case in the election twelve 
3 T ears previously, when they came into power. 
The Whigs, having exhausted their language 
in denouncing their opponents for nominating 
a man like Andrew Jackson, proceeded to look 
about in their own party to find one who should 
come as near him as possible in all the attri- 
butes that had given him so deep a hold on 
the people ; and they succeeded perfectly when 
they pitched on the old Indian fighter, Harrison. 
" Tippecanoe " proved quite as effective a war- 
cry in bringing about the downfall of the Jack- 
sonians as " Old Hickory " had shown itself to 
be a dozen years previously in raising them up. 
General Harrison had already shown himself to 
be a good soldier, and a loyal and honest pub- 
lic servant, although by no means standing in 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY. 233 

the first rank either as regards war -craft or 
state-craft ; but the mass of his supporters ap- 
parently considered the facts, or supposed facts, 
that he lived in a log-cabin the walls of which 
were decorated with coon-skins, and that he 
drank hard cider from a gourd, as being more 
important than his capacity as a statesman or 
his past services to the nation. 

The Whigs having thus taken a shaft from 
the Jacksonians' quiver, it was rather amusing 
to see the latter, in their turn, hold up their 
hands in horror at the iniquity of what would 
now be called a ' k hurrah " canvass ; blandly ig- 
noring the fact that it was simply a copy of 
their own successful proceedings. Says Ben- 
ton, with amusing gravity : " The class of in- 
ducements addressed to the passions and im- 
aginations of the people was such as history 
blushes to record," a remark that provokes crit- 
icism, when it is remembered that Benton had 
been himself a prominent actor on the Jack- 
sonian side in the campaigns of '28 and '32, 
when it was exclusively to " the passions and 
imaginations of the people " that all arguments 
were addressed. 

The Democrats did not long remain out of 
power; and they kept the control of the gov- 
ernmental policy in their hands pretty steadily 
until the time of the civil war ; nevertheless it 



234 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

is true that with the defeat of Van Buren the 
Jacksonian Democracy, as such, lost forever 
its grip on the direction of national affairs. 
When, under Polk, the Democrats came back, 
they came under the lead of the very men 
whom the original Jacksonians had opposed 
and kept down. With all their faults, Jack- 
son and Benton were strong Union men, and 
under them their party was a Union party. 
Calhoun and South Carolina, and the disunion- 
ists in the other Southern States were their bit- 
ter foes. But the disunion and extreme slav- 
ery elements within the Democratic ranks were 
increasing rapidly all the time ; and they had 
obtained complete and final control when the 
party reappeared as victors after their defeat in 
1840. Until Van Buren's overthrow the na- 
tionalists had held the upper hand in shaping 
Democratic policy ; but after that event the 
leadership of the party passed completely into 
the hands of the separatists. 

The defeat of Van Buren marks an era in 
more ways than one. During his administra- 
•tion slavery played a less prominent part in 
politics than did many other matters ; this was 
never so again. His administration was the 
last in which this question, or the question 
springing from it, did not overtop and dwarf in 
importance all others. Again, the presidential 



LAST DAYS OF JACKSON IAN DEMOCRACY. 235 

election of 1840 was the last into which slavery 
did not enter as a most important, and in fact 
as the vital and determining factor. In the 
contest between Van Buren and Harrison it did 
not have the least influence upon the result. 
Moreover, Van Buren was the last Democratic 
president who ruled over a Union of states ; all 
his successors, up to the time of Lincoln's elec- 
tion, merely held sway over a Union of sec- 
tions. The spirit of separation had identified 
itself with the maintenance of slavery, and the 
South was rapidly uniting into a compact array 
of states with interests that were hostile to the 
North on the point most vitally affecting the 
welfare of the whole country. 

No great question involving the existence 
of slavery was brought before the attention of 
Congress during Van Buren's term of office ; 
nor was the matter mooted except in the eter- 
nal wrangles over receiving the abolitionist pe- 
titions. Benton kept silent in these discussions, 
although voting to receive the petitions. As 
he grew older he continually grew wiser, and 
better able to do good legislative work on all 
subjects ; but he was not yet able to realize 
that the slavery question was one which could 
not be kept down, and which was bound to 
force itself into the sphere of national politics. 
He still insisted that it was only dragged be- 



236 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

fore Congress by a few fanatics at the North, 
and that in the South it was made the instru- 
ment by which designing and unscrupulous men 
•wished to break up the federal republic. His 
devotion to the Union, ever with him the chief 
and overmastering thought, made him regard 
with horror and aversion any man, at the North 
or at the South, who brought forward a ques- 
tion so fraught with peril to its continuance. 
He kept trying to delude himself into the be- 
lief that the discussion and the danger would 
alike gradually die away, and the former state 
of peaceful harmony between the sections, and 
freedom from disunion excitement, would re- 
turn. 

But the time for such an ending already 
lay in the past ; thereafter the outlook was to 
grow steadily darker year by year. Slavery 
lowered like a thunder-storm on the horizon ; 
and though sometimes it might seem for a 
moment to break away, yet in reality it had 
reached that stage when, until the final all- 
engulfing outburst took place, the clouds were 
bound for evermore to return after the rain. 



CHAPTER XL 
THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 

The Whigs in 1840 completely overthrew 
the Democrats, and for the first time elected 
a president and held the majority in both 
houses of Congress. Yet, as it turned out, all 
that they really accomplished was to elect a 
president without a party, for Harrison died 
when he had hardly more than sat in the pres- 
idential chair, and was succeeded by the vice- 
president, Tyler of Virginia. 

Harrison was a true Whig ; he was, when 
nominated, a prominent member of the Whig 
party, although of course not to be compared 
with its great leader, Henry Clay, or with its 
most mighty intellectual chief and champion 
in the Northeast, Daniel Webster, whose mu- 
tual rivalry had done much to make his nomi- 
nation possible. Tyler, however, could hardly 
be called a Whig at all ; on the contrary, he 
belonged rightfully in the ranks of those ex- 
treme Democrats who were farthest removed 
from the Whig standard, and who were as 



238 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

much displeased with the Union sentiments 
of the Jacksonians as they were with the per- 
sonal tyranny of Jackson himself. He was 
properly nothing but a dissatisfied Democrat, 
who hated the Jacksonians, and had been 
nominated only because the Whig politicians 
wished to strengthen their ticket and insure 
its election by bidding for the votes of the dis- 
contented in the ranks of their foes. Now a 
chance stroke of death put the presidency in 
the hands of one who represented this, the 
smallest, element in the coalition that over- 
threw Van Buren. 

The principles of the Whigs were hazily out- 
lined at the best, and the party was never a 
very creditable organization ; indeed, through- 
out its career, it could be most easily defined as 
the opposition to the Democracy. It was a free 
constructionist party, believing in giving a lib- 
eral interpretation to the doctrines of the Con- 
stitution ; otherwise, its principles were purely 
economic, as it favored a high tariff, internal 
improvements, a bank, and kindred schemes ; 
and its leaders, however they might quarrel 
among themselves, agreed thoroughly in their 
devout hatred of Jackson and all his works. 

It was on this last point only that Tyler 
came in. His principles had originally been 
ultra-Democratic. He had been an extreme 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 239 

strict constructionist, had belonged to that wing 
of the Democracy which inclined more and 
more towards separation, and had thus, on sev- 
eral grounds, found himself opposed to Jack- 
son, Benton, and their followers. Indeed, he 
went into opposition to his original party for 
reasons akin to those that influenced Calhoun ; 
and Seward's famous remark about the " ill- 
starred coalition between Whigs and Nulli- 
fiers " might with certain changes have been 
applied to the presidential election of 1840 
quite as well as to the senatorial struggles to 
which it had reference. 

Tyler, however, had little else in common 
with Calhoun, and least of all his intellect. 
He has been called a mediocre man ; but this 
is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician 
of monumental littleness. Owing to the nicely- 
divided condition of parties, and to the sheer 
accident which threw him into a position of 
such prominence that it allowed him to hold 
the balance of power between them, he was en- 
abled to turn politics completely topsy-turvy ; 
but his chief mental and moral attributes were 
peevishness, fretful obstinacy, inconsistency, in- 
capacity to make up his own mind, and the 
ability to quibble indefinitely over the most mi- 
croscopic and hair-splitting plays upon words, 
together with an inordinate vanity that so 



240 THOMAS HART DENTON. 

blinded him to all outside feeling as to make 
him really think that he stood a chance to be 
renominated for the presidency. 

The Whigs, especially in the Senate, under 
Henry Clay, prepared at once to push through 
various measures that should undo the work of 
the Jacksonians. Clay was boastfully and dom- 
ineeringly sure of the necessity of applying to 
uctual governmental work the economic the- 
ories that formed the chief stock in trade of 
his party. But it was precisely on these eco- 
nomic theories that Tyler split off from the 
Whigs. The result was that very shortly the 
real leader of the dominant party, backed by 
almost all his fellow party men in both houses 
of Congress, was at daggers drawn with the 
nominal Whig president, who in his turn was 
supported only by a " corporal's guard " of fol- 
lowers in the House of Representatives, by all 
the office - holders whom fear of removal re- 
duced to obsequious subserviency, and by a 
knot of obscure politicians who used him for 
their own ends, and worked alternately on his 
vanity and on his fears. The Democrats, led 
by Benton, played out their own game, and 
were the only parties to the three-cornered 
fight who came out of it with profit. The de- 
tails now offer rather dry reading, as the eco- 
nomic theories of all the contestants were more 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 241 

or less crude, the results of the conflict inde- 
cisive, and the effects upon our history ephem- 
eral. 

Clay began by a heated revival of one of 
Jackson's worst ideas, namely, that when the 
people elect a president they thereby mark 
with the seal of their approval any and every 
measure with which that favored mortal or his 
advisers may consider themselves identified, 
and indorse all his and their previous actions. 
He at once declared that the people had shown, 
by the size of Harrison's majority, that they 
demanded the repeal of the independent treas- 
ury act, and the passage of various other laws 
in accordance with some of his own favorite 
hobbies, two out of three voters, as a matter 
of fact, probably never having given a second 
thought to any of them. Accordingly he pro- 
ceeded to introduce a whole batch of bills, 
which he alleged that it was only yielding due 
respect to the spirit of Democracy to pass forth- 
with. 

Benton, however, even outdid Clay in paying 
homage to what he was pleased to call the 
" democratic idea." At this time he speaks of 
the last session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress 
as being " barren of measures, and necessarily 
so, as being the last of an administration super- 
seded by the popular voice and soon to expire ; 

16 



242 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

and therefore restricted by a sense of propriety, 
during the brief remainder of its existence, to the 
details of business and the routine of service." 
According to this theory an interregnum of 
some sixteen weeks would intervene between 
the terms of service of every two presidents. 
He also speaks of Tyler as having, when the 
legislature of Virginia disapproved of a course 
he wished to follow, resigned his seat " in obe- 
dience to the democratic principle," which, ac- 
cording to his views, thus completely nullified 
the section of the Constitution providing for a 
six years' term of service in the Senate. In 
truth Benton, like most other Jacksonian and 
JefTersonian leaders, became both foolish and 
illogical when he began to talk of the bundle of 
vague abstractions, which he knew collectively 
as the " democratic principle." Although not 
so bad as many of his school he had yet gradu- 
ally worked himself up to a belief that it was 
almost impious to pay anything but servile heed 
to the " will of the majority; " and was quite 
unconscious that to surrender one's own manhood 
and judgment to a belief in the divine right of 
kings was only one degree more ignoble, and 
was not a shadow more logical, and but little 
more defensible, than it was blindly to deify a 
majority — not of the whole people, but merely 
of a small fraction consisting of those who hap« 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 243 

pened to be of a certain sex, to have reached a 
certain age, to belong to a certain race, and to 
fulfill some other conditions. In fact there is 
no natural or divine law in the matter at all ; 
how large a portion of the population should 
be trusted with the control of the government 
is a question of expediency merely. In any 
purely native American community manhood 
suffrage works infinitely better than wouli any 
other system of government, and throughout 
our country at large, in spite of the large num- 
ber of ignorant foreign-born or colored voters, 
it is probably preferable as it stands to any 
modification of it ; but there is no more " nat- 
ural right " why a white man over twenty-one 
should vote than there is why a negro woman 
under eighteen should not. " Civil rights " and 
" personal freedom " are not terms that neces- 
sarily imply the right to vote. People make 
mistakes when governing themselves, exactly as 
they make mistakes when governing others ; 
all that can be said is, that in the former case 
their self-interest is on the side of good govern- 
ment, whereas in the latter it always may be, 
and often must be, the reverse; so that, when 
any people reaches a certain stage of mental 
development and of capacity to take care of its 
own concerns, it is far better that it should it- 
self take the reins. The distinctive features of 



244 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the American system are its guarantees of per- 
sonal independence and individual freedom ; 
that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each 
man his right to live as he chooses and to regu- 
late his own private affairs as he wishes, with- 
out being interfered with or tyrannized over by 
an individual, or by an oligarchic minority, or 
by a democratic majority; while, when the in- 
terests of the whole community are at stake, it 
is found best in the long run to let them be man- 
aged in accordance with the wishes of the ma- 
jority of those presumably concerned. 

Clay's flourish of trumpets foreboded trouble 
and disturbance to the Jacksonian camp. At 
last he stood at the head of a party controlling 
both branches of the legislative body, and de- 
voted to his behests ; and, if a little doubtful 
about the president, he still believed he could 
frighten him into doing as he was bid. He 
had long been in the minority, and had seen 
his foes ride roughshod over all he most believed 
in ; and now he prepared to pay them back in 
their own coin and to leave a heavy balance on 
his side of the reckoning. Nor could any Jack- 
sonian have shown himself more domineering 
and influenced by a more insolent disregard for 
the rights of others than Clay did in his hour 
of triumph. On the other side, Benton braced 
himself with dogged determination for the 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 245 

struggle ; for he was one of those men who 
fight a losing or a winning battle with equal 
resolution. 

Tyler's first message to Congress read like a 
pretty good Whig document. It did not dis- 
play any especial signs of his former strict con- 
struction theories, and gave little hope to the 
Democrats. The leader of the latter, indeed, 
Ben ton, commented upon both it and its author 
with rather grandiloquent severity, on account 
of its latitudinarian bias, and of its recommen- 
dation of a bank of some sort. However, the 
ink with which the .message was written could 
hardly have been dry before the president's 
mind began to change. He himself probably 
had very little idea what he intended to do, and 
so contrived to give the Whigs the impression 
that he would act in accordance with their 
wishes ; but the leaven had already begun 
working in his mind, and, not having much to 
work on, soon changed it so completely that he 
was willing practically to eat his own words. 

Shortly after Tyler had sent in his message 
outlining what legislation he deemed proper, he 
being by virtue of his position the nominal and 
titular leader of the Whigs, Clay, who was their 
real and very positive chief, and who was, more- 
over, determined to assert his chieftainship, in 
his turn laid down a programme for his party to 



246 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

follow, introducing a series of resolutions de- 
claring it necessary to pass a bill to repeal the 
sub-treasury act, another to establish a bank, 
another to distribute the proceeds of the public 
land sales, and one or two more, to which was 
afterwards added a bankruptcy measure. 

The sub-treasury bill was first taken up and 
promptly passed and signed. Benton, of course, 
led the hopeless fight against it, making a long 
and elaborate speech, insisting that the finances 
were in excellent shape, as they were, showing 
the advantages of hard money, and denouncing 
the bill on account of the extreme suddenness 
with which it took effect, and because it made 
no provision for any substitute. He also al- 
luded caustically to the curious and anomalous 
bank bill, which was then being patched up by 
the Whig leaders so as to get it into some 
such shape that the president would sign it. 

The other three important measures, that is, 
the bank, distribution, and bankruptcy bills, 
were all passed nearly together ; as Benton 
pointed out, they were got through only by a 
species of bargain and sale, the chief supporters 
of each agreeing to support the other, so as to 
get their own pet measure through. " All 
must go together or fall together. This is the 
decree out of doors. When the sun dips below 
the horizon a private congress is held ; the fate 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 247 

of the measures is decided ; a bundle is tied 
together ; and while one goes ahead as a bait, 
another is held back as a rod." 

The bankruptcy bill went through and was 
signed. It was urged by all the large debtor 
class, whose ranks had been filled to overflowing 
by the years of wild speculation and general 
bank suspension and insolvency. These debtors 
were quite numerous enough to constitute an 
important factor in politics, but Benton disre- 
garded them nevertheless, and fought the bill 
as stoutly as he did its companions, alleging 
that it was a gross outrage on honesty and on 
the rights of propert}^, and was not a bankrupt 
law at all, but practically an insolvent law for 
the abolition of debts at the will of the debtor. 
He pointed out grave and numerous defects of 
detail, and gave an exhaustive abstract of bank- 
ruptcy legislation in general ; the speech gave 
evidence of the tireless industry and wide range 
of learning for which Benton was preeminently 
distinguished. 

The third bill to be taken up and passed was 
that providing for the distribution of the public 
lands revenue, and thus indirectly for assuming 
the debts of the states. Tyler, in his message, 
had characteristically stated that, though it 
would be wholly unconstitutional for the fed- 
eral government to assume the debts of the 



248 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

states, yet it would be highly proper for it to 
give the latter money wherewith to pay them. 
Clay had always been an enthusiastic advocate 
of a distribution bill ; and accordingly one was 
now passed and signed with the least possible 
delay. It was an absolutely indefensible meas- 
ure. The treasury was empty, and loan and 
tax bills were pending at the very moment, in 
order to supply money for the actual running 
of the government. As Benton pointed out, 
Congress had been called together (a special 
session having been summoned by Harrison be- 
fore his death) to raise revenue, and the first 
thing done was to squander it. The distribu- 
tion took place when the treasury reports 
showed a deficit of sixteen millions of dollars. 
The bill was pushed through mainly by the 
states which had repudiated their debts in 
whole or in part ; and as these debts were 
largely owed abroad, many prominent foreign 
banking-houses and individuals took an active 
part in lobbying for the bill. Benton was em- 
phatically right in his opposition to the measure, 
but he was very wrong in some of the grounds 
he took. Thus he inveighed vigorously against 
the foreign capitalists who had come to help 
push the bill through Congress ; but he did not 
have anything to say against the scoundrelly 
dishonesty displayed by certain states towards 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 249 

their creditors, which had forced these capital- 
ists into the endeavor to protect themselves. 
He also incidentally condemned the original 
assumption by the national government of the 
debts of the states, at the time of the formation 
of the Constitution, which was an absolute ne- 
cessity ; and his constitutional views through- 
out seem rather strained. But he was right 
beyond cavil on the main point. It was crim- 
inal folly to give the states the impression that 
they would be allowed to create debts over 
which Congress could have no control, yet 
which Congress in the end would give them 
the money to pay. To reward a state for re- 
pudiating a debt by giving her the wherewithal 
to pay it was a direct and unequivocal encour- 
agement of dishonesty. In every respect the 
bill was wholly improper; and Benton's atti- 
tude towards it and towards similar schemes 
was incomparably better than the position of 
Clay, Webster, and the other Whigs. 

Both the bankrupt bill and the distribution 
bill were repealed very shortly ; the latter be- 
fore it had time to take effect. This was an 
emphatic indorsement by the public of Benton's 
views, and a humiliating rebuke to the Whig 
authors of the measures. Indeed, the whole 
legislation of the session was almost absolutely 
fruitless in its results. 



250 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

One feature of the struggle was an attempt 
by Clay, promptly and successfully resisted by 
Benton and Calhoun, to institute the hour limit 
for speeches in the Senate. There was a good 
deal of excuse for Clay's motion. The House 
could cut off debate by the previous question, 
which the Senate could not, and nevertheless 
had found it necessary to establish the hour 
limit in addition. Of course it is highly unde- 
sirable that there should not be proper freedom 
of debate in Congress ; but it is quite as hurtful 
to allow a minority to exercise their privileges 
improperly. The previous question is often 
abused and used tyrannically ; but on the whole 
it is a most invaluable aid to legislation. Ben- 
ton, however, waxed hot and wrathful over the 
proposed change in the Senate rules. He, with 
Calhoun and their followers, had been consum- 
ing an immense amount of time in speech-mak- 
ing against the Whig measures, and in offering 
amendments ; not with any hopes of bettering 
the bills, but for outside effect, and to annoy 
their opponents. He gives an amusingly naive 
account of their course of action, and the rea- 
sons for it, substantially as follows : — 

The Democratic senators acted upon a system, and 
with a thorough organization and a perfect under- 
standing. Being a minority, and able to do nothing, 
they became assailants, and attacked incessantly ; not 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 251 

by formal orations against the whole body of a meas- 
ure, but by sudden, short, and pungent speeches di- 
rected against the vulnerable parts, and pointed by 
proffered amendments. Amendments were continu- 
ally offered — a great number being prepared every 
night and placed in suitable hands for use the next 
day — always commendably calculated to expose an 
evil and to present a remedy. Near forty proposi- 
tions of amendment were offered to the first fiscal 
agent bill alone — the yeas and nays were taken upon 
them seven and thirty times. All the other promi- 
nent bills — distribution, bankrupt, fiscal corporation, 
new tariff act, called revenue — were served the same 
way ; every proposed amendment made an issue. 
There were but twenty-two of us, but every one was 
a speaker and effective. The " Globe " newspaper 
was a powerful ally, setting out all we did to the best 
advantage in strong editorials, and carrying out our 
speeches, fresh and hot, to the people ; and we felt 
victorious in the midst of unbroken defeats. 

It is no wonder that such rank filibustering, 
coupled with the exasperating self-complacency 
of its originators, should have excited in Whig 
bosoms every desperate emotion short of homi- 
cidal mania. 

Clay, to cut off such useless talk, gave notice 
that he would move to have the time for debate 
for each individual restricted ; remarking very 
truthfully that he did not believe the people 
at large would complain of the abridgment of 



252 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

speeches in Congress. But the Democratic sen- 
ators, all rather fond of windy orations, fairly 
foamed at the mouth at what they affected to 
deem such an infringement of their liberties ; 
and actually took the inexcusable resolution of 
bidding defiance to the rule if it was adopted, 
and refusing to obey it, no matter what degree 
of violence their conduct might bring about, — 
a resolution that was* wholly unpardonable. 
Benton was selected to voice their views upon 
the matter, which he did in a long, and not 
very wise speech ; while Calhoun was quite as 
emphatic in his threats of what would happen 
if attempt should be made to enforce the pro- 
posed rule. Clay was always much bolder in 
opening a campaign than in carrying it through ; 
and when it came to putting his words into 
deeds, he wholly lacked the nerve which would 
have enabled him to contend with two such 
men as the senators from Missouri and South 
Carolina. Had he possessed a temperament 
like that of either of his opponents, he would 
have gone on and have simply forced acquies- 
cence ; for any legislative body can certainly 
enforce what rules it may choose to make as to 
the conduct of its own members in addressing 
it ; but his courage failed him, and he withdrew 
from the contest, leaving the victory with tb<3 
Democrats. 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 253 

When the question of the re-charter of the 
district banks came up, it of course gave Benton 
another chance to attack his favorite foe. He 
offered a very proper amendment, which was 
voted down, to prohibit the banks from issuing 
a currency of small notes, fixing upon twenty 
dollars as being the lowest limit. This he sup- 
ported in a strong speech, wherein he once 
again argued at length in favor of a gold and 
silver currency, and showed the evil effects of 
small bank-notes, which might not be, and often 
were not, redeemable at par. He very properly 
pointed out that to have a sound currency, es- 
pecially in all the smaller denominations, was 
really of greater interest to the working men 
than to any one else. 

The great measure of the session, however, 
and the one that was intended to be the final 
crown and glory of the Whig triumph, was the 
bill to establish a new national bank. Among 
the political theories to which Clay clung. most 
closely, only the belief in a bank ranked higher 
in his estimation than his devotion to a protec- 
tive tariff. The establishment of a national 
bank seemed to him to be the chief object of a 
Whig success ; and that it would work imme- 
diate and immense benefit to the country was 
with him an article of faith. With both houses 
of Congress under his control, he at once pre- 



254 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

pared to push bis pet measure through, impa- 
tiently brushing aside all resistance. 

But at the very outset difficulty was feared 
from the action of the president. Tyler could 
not at first make up his mind what to do; or 
rather, he made it up in half a dozen different 
ways every day. His peevishness, vacillation, 
ambitious vanity, and sheer puzzle-headedness 
made him incline first to the side of his new 
friends and present supporters, the Whigs, and 
then to that of his old democratic allies, whose 
views on the bank, as on most other questions, 
he had so often openly expressed himself as 
sharing. But though his mind oscillated like 
a pendulum, yet each time it swung farther 
and farther over to the side of the Democracy, 
and it began to look as if he would certainly 
in the end come to a halt in the camp of the 
enemies of the Whigs ; his approach to this 
destination was merely hastened by Clay's over- 
bearing violence and injudicious taunts. 

However, at first Tyler did not dare to come 
out openly against any and all bank laws, but 
tried to search round for some compromise 
measure ; and as he could not invent a com- 
promise in fact, he came to the conclusion that 
one in words would do just as well. He said 
that his conscience would not permit him to 
sign a bill to establish a bank that was called 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 255 

a bank, but that be was willing to sign a bill 
establishing such an institution provided that it 
was called something else, though it should pos- 
sess all the properties of a bank. Such a pro- 
posal opened a wide field for the endless quib- 
bling in which his soul delighted. 

The secretary of the treasury, in response to 
a call from the Senate, furnished a plan for a 
bank, having modeled it studiously so as to 
overcome the president's scruples ; and a select 
committee of the Senate at once shaped a bill 
in accordance with the plans. Said Benton : 
" Even the title was made ridiculous to please 
the president, though not so much so as he 
wished. He objected to the name of bank 
either in the title or the body of the charter, 
and proposed to style it ' Fiscal Institute ; ' and 
afterwards the ' Fiscal Agent,' and finally the 
4 Fiscal Corporation. ' " Such preposterous folly 
on the president's part was more than the hot- 
blooded and overbearing Kentuckian could 
stand ; and, in spite of his absorbing desire for 
the success of his measure, and of the vital ne- 
cessity for conciliating Tyler, Clay could not 
bring himself to adopt such a ludicrous title, 
even though he had seen that the charter pro- 
vided that the institution, whatever it might be 
styled in form, should in fact have all the prop- 
erties of a bank. After a while, however, a 



256 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

compromise title was agreed on, but only a 
shadow less imbecile than the original one pro- 
posed by the president ; and it was agreed to 
call the measure the " Fiscal Bank " bill. 

The president vetoed it, but stated that he 
was ready to approve any similar bill that 
should be free from the objections he named. 
Clay could not resist reading Tyler a lecture on 
his misconduct, during the course of a speech in 
the Senate ; but the Whigs generally smothered 
their resentment, and set about preparing some- 
thing which the president would sign, and this 
time concluded that they would humor him to 
the top of his bent, even by choosing a title as 
ridiculous as he wished ; so they styled their 
bill one to establish a "Fiscal Corporation." 
Benton held the title up to well-deserved deri- 
sion, and showed that, though there had been 
quite an elaborate effort to disguise the form of 
the measure, and to make it purport to establish 
a bank that should have the properties of a 
treasury, yet that in reality it was simply a re- 
vival of the old scheme under another name. 
The Whigs swallowed the sneers of their oppo- 
nents as best they could, and passed their bill. 

The president again interposed his veto. An 
intrigue was going on among a few unimpor- 
tant congressmen and obscure office-holders to 
form a new party with Tyler at its head ; and 



THE PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 257 

the latter willingly entered into the plan, his 
mind, which was not robust at the best, being 
completely dazzled by his sudden elevation and 
his wild hopes that he could continue to keep 
the place which he had reached. He had given 
the Whigs reason to expect that he would sign 
the bill, and had taken none of his cabinet into 
his confidence. So, when his veto came in, it 
raised a perfect whirlwind of wrath and bitter 
disappointment. His cabinet all resigned, ex- 
cept Webster, who stayed to finish the treaty 
with Great Britain ; and the Whigs formally 
read him out of the party. The Democrats 
looked on with huge enjoyment, and patted 
Tyler on the back, for they could see that he 
was bringing: their foes to ruin ; but neverthe- 
less they despised him heartily, and abandoned 
him wholly when he had served their turn. 
Left without any support among the regulars 
of either side, and his own proposed third party 
turning out a still-born abortion, he simply 
played out his puny -part until his term ended, 
and then dropped noiselessly out of sight. It is 
only the position he filled, and not in the least 
his ability, for either good or bad, in filling it, 
that prevents his name from sinking into mer- 
ciful oblivion. 

There was yet one more brief spasm over the 
bank, however; the president sending in a plan 
17 



258 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

for a " Fiscal Agent," to be called a Board of 
Exchequer. Congress contemptuously refused 
to pay any attention to the proposition, Benton 
showing its utter un worthiness in an excellent 
speech, one of the best that he made on the 
whole financial question. 

Largely owing to the cross purposes at which 
the president and his party were working, the 
condition of the treasury became very bad. It 
sought to provide for its immediate wants by 
the issue of treasury notes, differing from for- 
mer notes of the kind in that they were made 
reissuable. Benton at once, and very properly, 
attacked this proceeding. He had a check 
drawn for a few days' compensation as senator, 
demanded payment in hard money, and when 
he was given treasury notes instead, made a 
most emphatic protest in the Senate, which was 
entirely effectual, the practically compulsory 
tender of the paper money being forthwith 
stopped. 

It was at this time, also, that bills to subsi- 
dize steamship lines were first passed, and that 
the enlarging and abuse of the pension system 
began, which in our own day threatens to be- 
come a really crying evil. Benton opposed both 
sets of measures ; and in regard to the pension 
matter showed that he would not let himself, 
by any specious plea of exceptional suffering or 



THR PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY. 259 

need for charity, be led into vicious special legis- 
lation, sure in the end to bring about the break, 
ing down of some of the most important princi- 
ples of government 



CHAPTER XII. 
BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 

Two important controversies with foreign 
powers became prominent during Tyler's presi- 
dency ; but he had little to do with the settle- 
ment of either, beyond successively placing in 
his cabinet the two great statesmen who dealt 
with them. Webster, while secretary of state, 
brought certain of the negotiations with Eng- 
land to a close ; and later on, Calhoun, while 
holding the same office, took up Webster's work 
and also grappled with — indeed partly caused 
— the troubles on the Mexican border, and 
turned them to the advantage of the South and 
slavery. 

Our boundaries were still very ill-defined, ex- 
cept where they were formed by the Gulf and 
the Ocean, the Great Lakes, and the river St. 
John. Even in the Northeast, where huge 
stretches of unbroken forest-land separated the 
inhabited portions of Canada from those of New 
England, it was not yet decided how much of 
this wilderness belonged to us and how much 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 261 

to the Canadians ; and in the vast, unsettled 
regions of the far West our claims came into 
direct conflict with those of Mexico and of 
Great Britain. The ownership of these little 
known and badly mapped regions could with 
great difficulty be decided on grounds of absolute 
and abstract right ; the title of each contestant 
to the land was more or less plausible, and at the 
same time more or less defective. The matter 
was sure to be decided in favor of the strong- 
est ; and, say what we will about the justice and 
right of the various claims, the honest truth is, 
that the comparative might of the different na- 
tions, and not the comparative righteousness of 
their several causes, was the determining factor 
in the settlement. Mexico lost her northern 
provinces by no law of right, but simply by the 
law of the longest sword — the same law that 
gave India to England. In both instances the 
result was greatly to the benefit of the con- 
quered peoples and of every one else ; though 
there is this wide difference between the two 
cases : that whereas the English rule in India, 
while it may last for decades or even for centu- 
ries, must eventually come to an end and leave 
little trace of its existence ; on the other hand 
our conquests from Mexico determined for all 
time the blood, speech, and law of the men who 
should fill the lands we won. 



262 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

The questions between Great Britain and our- 
selves were compromised by each side accept- 
ing about half what it claimed, only because 
neither was willing to push the other to extrem- 
ties. Englishmen like Palmerston might hector 
and ruffle, and Americans like Benton might 
swagger and bully ; but when it came to be a 
question of actual fighting each people recog- 
nized the power of the other, and preferred to 
follow the more cautious and peaceful, not to 
say timid, lead of such statesmen as Webster 
and Lord Melbourne. Had we been no stronger 
than the Sikhs, Oregon and Washington would 
at present be British possessions ; and if Great 
Britain had been as weak as Mexico, she would 
not now hold a foot of territory on the Pacific 
coast. Either nation might perhaps have re- 
fused to commit a gross and entirely unpro- 
voked and uncalled-for act of aggression ; but 
each, under altered conditions, would have 
readily found excuses for showing much less re- 
gard for the claims of the other than actually 
was shown. It would be untrue to say that 
nations have not at times proved themselves 
capable of acting with great disinterestedness 
and generosity towards other peoples ; but such 
conduct is not very common at the best, and 
although it often may be desirable, it certainly 
is not always so. If the matter in dispute is 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 263 

of great importance, and if there is a doubt as 
to which side is right, then the strongest party 
to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself 
the benefit of that doubt; and international 
morality will have to take tremendous strides 
in advance before this ceases to be the case. 

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of 
the treaties and wars by means of which we 
finally gave definite bounds to our territory be- 
yond the Mississippi. Contemporary political 
writers and students, of the lesser sort, are al- 
ways painfully deficient in the sense of historic 
perspective ; and to such the struggles for the 
possession of the unknown and dimly outlined 
western wastes seemed of small consequence 
compared to similar European contests for ter- 
ritorial aggrandizement. Yet, in reality, when 
we look at the far-reaching nature of the results, 
the questions as to what kingdom should receive 
the fealty of Holstein or Lorraine, of Savoy or 
the Dobrudscha, seem of absolutely trivial im- 
portance compared to the infinitely more mo- 
mentous ones as to the future race settlement 
and national ownership of the then lonely and 
unpeopled lands of Texas, California, and Ore- 
gon. 

Benton, greatly to the credit of his foresight, 
and largely in consequence of his strong nation- 
alist feeling, thoroughly appreciated the impor- 



264 Til MAS HART BENTON. 

tance of our geographical extensions. He was 
the great champion of the West and of western 
development, and a furious partisan of every 
movement in the direction of the enlargement 
of our western boundaries. Many of his ex- 
pressions, when talking of the greatness of our 
country and of the magnitude of the interests 
which were being decided, not only were gran- 
diloquent in manner, but also seem exaggerated 
and overwrought even as regards matter. But 
when we think of the interests for which he 
contended, as they were to become, and not as 
they at the moment were, the appearance of ex- 
aggeration is lost, and the intense feeling of his 
speeches no longer seems out of place or dis- 
proportionate to the importance of the subject 
with which he dealt. Without clearly formu- 
lating his opinions, even to himself, and while 
sometimes prone to attribute to his country at 
the moment a greatness she was not to possess 
for two or three generations to come, he, never- 
theless, had engrained in his very marrow and 
fibre the knowledge that inevitably, and beyond 
all doubt, the coming years were to be hers. 
He knew that, while other nations held the 
past, and shared with his own the present, yet 
that to her belonged the still formless and un- 
shaped future. More clearly than almost any 
other statesman he beheld the grandeur of the 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 265 

nation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the 
advancing years. 

He was keenly alive to the need of our having 
free chance to spread towards the northwest ; 
he very early grasped the idea that in that di- 
rection we ought to have room for continental 
development. In his earliest years, to be sure, 
when the Mississippi seemed a river of the 
remote western border, when nobody, not even 
the hardiest trapper, had penetrated the bound- 
less and treeless plains that stretch to the foot- 
hills of the Rockies, and when the boldest 
thinkers had not dared to suppose that we could 
ever hold together as a people, when once scat- 
tered over so wide a territory, he had stated in 
a public speech that he considered the moun- 
tains to be our natural frontier line to the west, 
and the barrier beyond which we ought not to 
pass, and had expressed his trust that on the 
Pacific coast there would grow up a kindred 
and friendly Republic. But very soon, as the 
seemingly impossible became the actual, he him- 
self changed, and ever afterwards held that we 
should have, wherever possible, no boundaries 
but the two Oceans. 

Benton's violent and aggressive patriotism 
undoubtedly led him to assume positions to- 
wards foreign powers that were very repugnant 
to the quiet, peacable, and order-loving portion 



266 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

of the community, especially when he gave vent 
to the spirit of jealous antagonism which he felt 
towards Great Britain, the power that held 
sway over the wilderness bordering us on the 
north. Yet the arrogant attitude he assumed 
was more than justified by the destiny of the 
great Republic ; and it would have been well 
for all America if we had insisted even more 
than we did upon the extension northward of 
our boundaries. Not only the Columbia but 
also the Red River of the North — and the Sas- 
katchewan and Frazer as well — should lie 
wholly within our limits, less for our own sake 
than for the sake of the men who dwell along 
their banks. Columbia, Saskatchewan, and 
Manitoba would, as states of the American 
Union, hold positions incomparably more impor- 
tant, grander, and more dignified than they can 
ever hope to reach either as independent com- 
munities or as provincial dependencies of a for- 
eign power that regards them with a kindly tol- 
erance somewhat akin to contemptuous indiffer- 
ence. Of course no one would wish to see these, 
or any other settled communities, now added to 
our domain by force ; we want no unwilling citi- 
zens to enter our Union ; the time to have taken 
the lands was before settlers came into them. 
European nations war for the possession of 
thicky settled districts which, if conquered, will 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 267 

for centuries remain alien and hostile to the 
conquerors; we, wiser in our generation, have 
seized the waste solitudes that lay near us, the 
limitless forests and never ending plains, and 
the valleys of the great, lonely rivers ; and have 
thrust our own sons into them to take posses- 
sion ; and a score of years after each conquest 
we see the conquered land teeming with a peo- 
ple that is one with ourselves. 

Benton felt that all the unoccupied land ip 
the northwest was by right our heritage, and 
he was willing to do battle for it if necessary. 
He was a perfect type of western American 
statesmanship in his way of looking at our for- 
eign relations ; he was always unwilling to com- 
promise, being of that happy temperament 
which is absolutely certain that its claims are 
just and righteous in their entirety, and that it 
would be wrong to accept anything less than 
all that is demanded ; he was willing to bully 
if our rights, as he deemed them, were not 
granted us ; and he was perfectly ready to fight 
if the bullying was unsuccessful. True, he did 
not consistently carry through all his theories 
to their logical consequences ; but it may well 
be questioned whether, after all, his original 
attitude towards Great Britain was not wiser, 
looking to its probable remote results, than that 
which was finally taken by the national govern- 



268 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

ment, whose policy was on this point largely 
shaped by the feeling among the richer and 
more educated classes of the Northeast. These 
classes have always been more cautious and 
timid than any others in the Union, especially 
in their way of looking at possible foreign 
wars, and have never felt much of the spirit 
which made the West stretch out impatiently 
for new lands. Fortunately they have rarely 
been able to control our territorial growth. 

No foot of soil to which we had any title in 
the Northwest should have been given up ; we 
were the people who could use it best, and we 
ought to have taken it all. The prize was well 
worth winning, and would warrant a good deal 
of risk being run. We had even then grown 
to be so strong that we were almost sure even- 
tually to win in any American contest for con- 
tinental supremacy. We were near by, our 
foes far away — for the contest over the Co- 
lumbia would have been settled in Canada. 
We should have had hard fighting to be sure, 
but sooner or later the result would have been 
in our favor. There were no better soldiers in 
the world than the men of Balaclava and Inker- 
man, but the victors of Buena Vista and Cha- 
pultepec were as good. Scott and Taylor were 
not great generals, but they were, at least, the 
equals of Lord Raglan ; and we did not have in 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 269 

our service any such examples of abnormal mil- 
itary inaptitude as Lords Lucan and Cardigan 
and their kind. 

It was of course to be expected that men 
like Benton would bitterly oppose the famous 
Ashburton treaty, which was Webster's crown- 
ing work while secretary of state, and the only 
conspicuous success of Tyler's administration. 
The Ashburton treaty was essentially a compro- 
mise between the extreme claims of the two 
contestants, as was natural where the claims 
were based on very unsubstantial grounds and 
the contestants were of somewhat the same 
strength. It was most beneficial in its immedi- 
ate effects ; and that it was a perfectly dignified 
and proper treaty for America to make is best 
proved by the virulent hostility with which 
Palmerston and his followers assailed it as a 
" surrender " on the part .of England, while 
Englishmen of the same stamp are to this day 
never tired of lamenting the fact that they have 
allowed our western boundaries to be pushed 
so far to the north. But there appears to be 
much excuse for Benton's attitude, when we 
look at the treaty as one in a chain of incidents, 
and with regard to its future results. Our ter- 
ritorial quarrels with Great Britain were not 
like those between most other powers. It 
was for the interest of the whole western hemi- 



270 THOMAS HART BENT OX. 

sphere that no European nation should have 
extensive possessions between the Atlantic and 
the Pacific; and by right we should have given 
ourselves the benefit of every doubt in all 
territorial questions, and have shown ourselves 
ready to make prompt appeal to the sword 
whenever it became necessary as a last resort. 

Still, as regards the Ashburton treaty itself, 
it must be admitted that much of Benton's 
opposition was merely factious and partisan, 
on account of its being a Whig measure ; and 
his speeches on the subject contain a number 
of arguments that are not very creditable to 
him. 

Some of his remarks referred to a matter 
which had been already a cause of great excite- 
ment during Van Buren's administration, and 
on which he had spoken more than once. This 
was the destruction of the steamer Caroline by 
the British during the abortive Canadian insur- 
rection of 1837. Much sympathy had been 
felt for the rebels by the Americans along the 
border, and some of them had employed the 
Caroline in conveying stores to the insurgents ; 
and in revenge a party of British troops sur- 
prised and destroyed her one night while she< 
was lying in an American port. This was a 
gross and flagrant violation of our rights, and 
was promptly resented by Van Buren, who had 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 271 

done what be could to maintain order along the 
border, and had been successful in his efforts. 
Benton had supported the president in pre- 
venting a breach of neutrality on our part, and 
was fiercely indignant when the breach was 
committed by the other side. Reparation was 
demanded forthwith. The British government 
at first made evasive replies. After a while a 
very foolish personage named McLeod, a Brit- 
ish subject, who boasted that he had taken part 
in the affair, ventured into New York and- wai 
promptly imprisoned by the state authorities. 
His boastings, fortunately for him, proved to be 
totally unfounded, and he was acquitted by thel 
jury before whom he was taken, after a deten- 
tion of several months in prison. But mean- 
while the British government demanded his 
release — adopting a very different tone with 
Tyler and the Whigs from that which they had 
been using towards Van Buren, who still could 
conjure with Jackson's terrible name. The 
United States agreed to release McLeod, but 
New York refused to deliver him up ; and be- 
fore the question was decided he was acquitted, 
as said above. It was clearly wrong for a state 
to interfere in a disagreement between the na- 
tion and a foreign power ; and on the other 
hand the federal authorities did not show as 
much firmness in their dealings with England 



272 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

as they should have shown. Benton, true to 
certain of his states-rights theories and in pur- 
suance of his policy of antagonism to Great 
Britain, warmly supported the attitude of New 
York, alleging that the United States had no 
it to interfere with her disposal of Mc- 
Leod; and asserting that while if the citizens 
« one country committed an outrage upon an- 
other it was necessary to apply to the sover- 
eign for redress, yet that if the wrong-doers 
caine into the country which had been aggrieved 
they might be seized and punished ; and he 
exultingly referred to Jackson's conduct at the 
time of the first Seminole War, when he hung 
off-hand two British subjects whom he accused 
of inciting the Indians against us, Great Britain 
not making any protest. The Caroline matter 
was finally settled in the Ashburton treaty, the 
British making a formal but very guarded apol- 
for her destruction, — an apology which did 
not satisfy Benton in the least. 

it is little to Benton's credit, however, that, 
wnile thus courting foreign wars, he yet opposed 
the efforts of the Whigs to give us a better 
navy. Our navy was then good of its kind, but 
altogether too small. Benton's opposition to its 
increase seems to have proceeded partly from 
mere bitter partisanship, partly from sheer ig- 
norance, and partly from the doctrinaire dread 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 273 

of any kind of standing military or naval force, 
which he had inherited, with a good many simi- 
lar ideas, from the Jeffersonians. 

He attacked the whole treaty, article by arti- 
cle, when it came up for ratification in the Sen- 
ate, making an extremely lengthy and elab- 
orate speech, or rather set of speeches, against 
it. Much of his objection, especially to the 
part compromising the territorial claims of the 
two governments, was well founded ; but much 
was also factious and groundless. The most 
important point of all that was in controveroy, 
the ownership of Oregon, was left unsettled ; 
but, as will be shown farther on, this was wise. 
He made this omission a base or pretext for the 
charge that the treaty was gotten up in Jie 
interests of the East, — although with frank 
lack of logic he also opposed it because it sac- 
rificed the interests of Maine, — and that it was 
detrimental to the South and West ; and he did 
his best to excite sectional feeling against it. 
He also protested against the omission of all 
reference to the impressment of American sail- 
ors b^ British vessels ; and this was a valid 
ground of opposition, — although Webster had 
really settled the matter by writing a formal 
note to the British government, in which he 
practically gave official notice that any attempt 
to revive the practice would be repelled by force 
of arms* 



274 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Benton occupied a much less tenable position 
when he came to the question of slavery, and 
inveighed against the treaty because it did not 
provide for the return of fugitive slaves, or of 
slaves taken from American coasting vessels 
when the latter happened to be obliged to put 
into West Indian ports, and because it did con- 
tain a provision that we ourselves should keep 
in commission a squadron on the coast of Africa 
to cooperate with the British in the suppression 
of the slave-trade. Benton's object in attack- 
ing the treaty on this point was to excite the 
South to a degree that would make the senators 
from that section refuse to join in ratifying it ; 
but the attempt was a flat failure. It is hardly 
to be supposed that he himself was as indignant 
over this question as he pretended to be. He 
must have realized that, so long as we had among 
ourselves an institution so wholly barbarous 
and out of date as slavery, just so long we 
should have to expect foreign powers to treat us 
rather cavalierly on that one point. Whatever 
we might say among ourselves as to the rights 
of property or the necessity of preserving the 
Union by refraining from the disturbance of 
slavery, it was certain that foreign nations 
would place the manhood and liberty of the 
slave above the vested interest of the master — 
all the more readily because they were jealous 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 275 

of the Union and anxious to see it break up, 
and were naturally delighted to take the side of 
abstract justice and humanity, when to do so 
was at the expense of outsiders and redounded 
to their own credit, without causing them the 
least pecuniary loss or personal inconvenience. 
The attitude of slave-holders towards freedom 
in the abstract was grotesque in its lack of logic ; 
but the attitude of many other classes of men, 
both abroad and at home, towards it was equally 
full of a grimly unconscious humor. The south- 
ern planters, who loudly sympathized with Kos- 
suth and the Hungarians, were entirely uncon- 
scious that their tyranny over their own black 
bondsmen made their attacks upon Austria's 
despotism absurd ; and Germans, who were 
shocked at our holding the blacks in slavery, 
could not think of freedom in their own country 
without a shudder. On one night the Demo- 
crats of the Northern States would hold a mass 
meeting to further the cause of Irish freedom, 
on the next night the same men would break 
up another meeting held to help along the free- 
ing of the negroes ; while the English aristoc- 
racy held up its hands in horror at American 
slavery and set its face like a flint against all 
efforts to do Ireland tardy and incomplete jus- 
tice. 

Again, in his opposition to the extradition 



276 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

clause of the treat} 7 , Benton was certainly 
wrong. Nothing is clearer than that nations 
ought to combine to prevent criminals from 
escaping punishment merely by fleeing over an 
imaginary line ; the crime is against all society, 
and society should unite to punish it. Espe- 
cially is there need of the most stringent ex- 
tradition laws between countries whose people 
have the same speech and legal system, as with 
the United States and Great Britain. Indeed, 
it is a pity that our extradition laws are not 
more stringent. But Benton saw, or affected 
to see, in the extradition clause, a menace to 
political refugees, and based his opposition to it 
mainl} T on this ground. He also quoted on his 
side the inevitable Jefferson ; for Jefferson, or 
rather the highly idealized conception of what 
Jefferson had been, shared with the " demos 
krateo principle " the honor of being one of 
the twin fetiches to which Benton, in common 
with most of his fellow-Democrats, especially 
delighted to bow down. 

But when he came to the parts of the treaty 
that defined our northeastern boundary and so 
much of our northwestern boundary as lay near 
the Great Lakes, Benton occupied far more 
defensible ground ; and the parts of his speech 
referring to these questions were very strong in- 
deed. He attempted to show that in the matter 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 211 

of the Maine frontier we had surrendered very 
much more than there was any need of our do- 
ing, and that the British claim was unfounded; 
and there seems now to be good reason for 
thinking him right, although it must be ad- 
mitted that in agreeing to the original line in 
earlier treaties the British had acted entirely 
under a misapprehension as to where it would 
go. Benton was also able to make a good 
point against Webster for finally agreeing to 
surrender so much of Maine's claim by showing 
the opposition the latter had made, while in the 
Senate, to a similar but less objectionable clause 
in a treaty which Jackson's administration had 
then been trying to get through. Again Web- 
ster had, in defending the surrender of certain 
of our claims along the boundary west of Lake 
Superior, stated that the country was not very 
valuable, as it was useless for agricultural pur- 
poses ; and Benton had taken him up sharply 
on this point, saying that we wanted the land 
anyhow, whether it produced corn and potatoes 
or only furs and lumber. The amounts of ter- 
ritory as to which our claims were compromised 
were not very large compared to the extent of 
the Pacific coast lands which were still left in 
dispute ; and it was perhaps well that the 
treaty was ratified ; but certainly there is much 
to be said on Benton's side so far as his opposi- 
tion to the proposed frontier was concerned. 



278 THOMAS EART BENTON. 

However, he was only able to rally eight 
other senators to his support, and the treaty 
went through the Senate triumphantly. It en- 
countered an even more bitter opposition in 
Parliament, where Palmerston headed a series 
of furious attacks upon it, for reasons the pre- 
cise opposite of those which Benton alleged, 
arguing that England received much less, in- 
stead of much more, than her due, and thereby 
showing Webster's position in a very much 
better light than that in which it would other- 
wise have appeared. Eventually the British 
government ratified the treaty. 

The Ashburton treaty did not touch on the 
Oregon matter at all ; nor was this dealt with 
by Webster while he was secretary of state. 
But it came before the Senate at that time, 
and later on Calhoun took it up, when filling 
Webster's place in the cabinet, although a final 
decision was not reached until during Polk's 
presidency. Webster did not appreciate the 
importance of Oregon in the least, and more- 
over came from a section of the country that 
was not inclined to insist on territorial expan- 
sion at the hazard of a war, in which the mer- 
chants of the sea-board would be the chief suf- 
ferers. Calhoun, it is true, came from a pecu- 
liarly militant and bellicose state, but on the 
other hand from a section that was not very 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 279 

anxious to see the free North acquire new terri- 
tory. So it happened that neither of Tyler's 
two great secretaries felt called upon to insist 
too vehemently upon going to extremes in de- 
fense of our rights, or supposed rights, along 
the Pacific coast ; and though in the end the 
balance was struck pretty evenly between our 
claims and those of our neighbor, yet it is to be 
regretted that we did not stand out stiffly for 
the whole of our demand. Our title was cer- 
tainly not perfect, but it was to the full as good 
as, or better than, Great Britain's; and it would 
have been better in the end had we insisted 
upon the whole territory being given to us, no 
matter what price we had to pay. 

The politico-social line of division between 
the East and the West had been gradually 
growing fainter as that between the North 
and South grew deeper ; but on the Oregon 
question it again became prominent. South- 
eastern Democrats, like the Carolinian McDuf- 
fie, spoke as slightingly of the value of Oregon, 
and were as little inclined to risk a war for its 
possession, as the most peace-loving Whigs of 
New England; while the intense western feel- 
ing against giving up any of our rights on the 
Pacific coast was best expressed by the two 
senators from the slave state of Missouri. Ben- 
ton was not restrained in his desire to add to 



280 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the might of the Union by any fear of the pos< 
sible future effect upon the political power of 
the Slave States. Although a slave-bolder and 
the representative of slave-holders, he was fully 
alive to the evils of slavery, though as yet not 
seeing clearly how all-important a question it 
had become. The preservation and extension of 
the Union and obedience to the spirit of De- 
mocracy were the chief articles of his political 
creed, and to these he always subordinated all 
others. When, in speaking of slavery, he made 
use, as he sometimes did, of expressions that 
were not far removed from those of men really 
devoted to the slave interests, it was almost 
always because he had some ulterior object in 
view, or for factional ends; for unfortunately 
his standard of political propriety was not suf- 
ficiently high to prevent his trying to make 
use of any weapon, good or bad, with which to 
overturn his political foes. In protesting against 
the Ashburton treaty, he outdid even such slav- 
ery champions as Calhoun in the extravagance 
of his ideas as to what we should demand of 
foreign powers in reference to their treatment 
of our "peculiar institution;" but he seems 
to have done this merely because thereby he 
got an additional handle of attack against the 
Whig measures. The same thing was true 
earlier of his fulmination against Clay's pro- 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 281 

posed Panama Congress ; and even before that, 
in attacking Adams for his supposed part in the 
treaty whereby we established the line of our 
Spanish frontier, he dragged slavery into the 
question, not, apparently, because he really par- 
ticularly wished to see our slave territory ex- 
tended, but because he thought that he might 
use the slavery cry to excite in one other section 
of the country a feeling as strong as that which 
the West already felt in regard to territorial 
expansion generally. Indeed, his whole conduct 
throughout the Oregon controversy, especially 
when taken in connection with the fact that 
he stood out for Maine's frontier rights more 
stoutly than the Maine representatives them- 
selves, shows how free from sectional bias was 
his way of looking at our geographical growth. 
The territory along the Pacific coast lying 
between California on the south and Alaska on 
the north — " Oregon," as it was comprehen- 
sively called — had been a source of dispute 
for some time between the United States and 
Great Britain. After some negotiations both 
had agreed with Russia to recognize the line of 
54° 40' as the southern boundary of the latter's 
possessions ; and Mexico's undisputed posses- 
sion of California gave an equally well marked 
southern limit, at the forty - second parallel. 
All between was in dispute. The British had 



282 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

trading posts at the mouth of the Columbia, 
which they emphatically asserted to be theirs •, 
we, on the other hand, claimed an absolutely 
clear title up to the forty - ninth parallel, a 
couple of hundred miles north of the mouth of 
the Columbia, and asserted that for all the bal- 
ance of the territory up to the Russian posses- 
sions our title was at any rate better than that 
of the British. In 1818 a treaty had been made 
providing for the joint occupation of the terri- 
tory by the two powers, as neither was willing 
to give up its claim to the whole, or at the time 
at ^all understood the value of the possession, 
then entirely unpeopled. This treaty of joint 
occupancy had remained in force ever since. 
Under it the British had built great trading 
stations, and used the whole country in the in- 
terests of certain fur companies. The Amer- 
icans, in spite of some vain efforts, were unable 
to compete with them in this line ; but, what 
was infinitely more important, had begun, even 
prior to 1840, to establish actual settlers along 
the banks of the rivers, some missionaries be- 
ing the first to come in. As long, however, as 
the territory remained sparsely settled, and the 
communication with it chiefly by sea, the hold 
of Great Britain gave promise of being the 
stronger. But the aspect of affairs was totally 
changed when in 1842 a huge caravan of over 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 283 

a thousand Americans made the journey over- 
land from the frontiers of Missouri, taking with 
them their wives and their children, their flocks 
and herds, carrying their long rifles on their 
shoulders, and their axes and spades in the great 
canvas - topped wagons. The next year, two 
thousand more settlers of the same sort in their 
turn crossed the vast plains, wound their way 
among the Rocky Mountains through the pass 
explored by Fremont, Benton's son-in-law, and 
after suffering every kind of hardship and dan- 
ger, and warding off the attacks of hostile 
Indians, descended the western slope of the 
great water-shed to join their fellows by the 
banks of the Columbia. When American set- 
tlers were once in actual possession of the dis- 
puted territory, it became evident that the 
period of Great Britain's undisputed sway was 
over. 

The government of the United States, mean- 
while, was so far from helping these settlers 
that it on the contrary rather threw obstacles in 
their way. As usual with us, the individual ac- 
tivity of the citizens themselves, who all acted 
independently and with that peculiar self-reli- 
ance that is the chief American characteristic, 
outstripped the activity of their representatives, 
who were obliged all to act together, and who 
were therefore held back by each other, — our 



284 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Constitution, while giving free scope for individ- 
ual freedom, wisely providing such checks as to 
make our governmental system eminently con- 
servative in its workings. Tyler's administra- 
tion did not wish to embroil itself with Eng- 
land ; so it refused any aid to the settlers, and 
declined to give them grants of land, as under 
the joint occupancy treaty that would have 
given England offense and cause for complaint. 
But Benton and the other Westerners were 
perfectly willing to offend England, if by so do- 
ing they could help America to obtain Oregon, 
and were too rash and headstrong to count the 
cost of their actions. Accordingly, a bill was 
introduced providing for the settlement of Ore- 
gon, and giving each settler six hundred and 
forty acres, and additional land if he had a fam- 
ily ; so that every inducement was held out to 
the emigrants, the West wanting to protect and 
encourage them by all the means in its power. 
The laws and jurisdiction of the Territory of 
Iowa were to be extended to all the settlers on 
the Pacific coast, who hitherto had governed 
themselves merely by a system of mutual agree- 
ments. 

The bill was, of course, strongly opposed, es- 
pecially on account of the clause giving land to 
the settlers. It passed the Senate by a close 
vote, but failed in the House. Naturally Ben- 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 285 

ton was one of its chief supporters, and spoke at 
length in its favor. He seized the kernel of the 
matter when, in advocating the granting of land, 
he spoke of immigration as 4 * the only thing 
which can save the country from the British, 
acting through their powerful agent, the Hud- 
son's Bay Company." He then blew a lusty 
note of defiance to Great Britain herself : — 

I think she will take offense, do what we may in 
relation to this territory. She wants it herself, and 
means to quarrel for it, if she does not fight for it. 
... I grant that she will take offense, but that is 
not the question with me. Has she a right to take 
offense ? That is my question ! And this being de- 
cided in the negative, I neither fear nor calculate con- 
sequences. . . . Courage will keep her off, fear will 
bring her upon us. The assertion of our rights will 
command her respect ; the fear to assert them will 
bring us her contempt. . . . Neither nations nor in- 
dividuals ever escaped danger by fearing it. They 
must face it and defy it. An abandonment of a right 
for fear of bringing on an attack, instead of keeping 
it off, will inevitably bring on the outrage that is 
dreaded. 

He was right enough in his disposition to re- 
sent the hectoring spirit which, at that time, 
characterized Great Britain's foreign policy; 
but he was all wrong in condemning delay, and 
stating that if things were left as they were 
time would work against us, and not for us. 



286 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

In this respect Calhoun, who opposed the bill, 
was much wiser. He advocated a policy of 
44 masterly inactivity," foreseeing that time was 
everything to us, inasmuch as the land was sure 
in the end to belong to that nation whose peo- 
ple had settled in it, and we alone were able to 
furnish a constantly increasing stream of immi- 
grants. Later on, however, Calhoun abandoned 
this policy, probably mainly influenced by fear 
of the extension of free territory, and consented 
to a compromise with Great Britain. The true 
course to have pursued would have been to have 
combined the ideas of both Benton and Calhoun, 
and to have gone farther than either ; that is, we 
should have allowed the question to remain un- 
settled as long as was possible, because every 
year saw an increasing American population in 
the coveted lands, and rendered the ultimate 
decision surer to be for us. When it was im- 
possible to postpone the question longer, we 
should have insisted upon its being settled 
entirely in our favor, no matter at what cost. 
The unsuccessful attempts, made by Benton and 
his supporters, to persuade the Senate to pass a 
resolution, requiring that notice of the termina- 
tion of the joint occupancy treaty should forth- 
with be given, were certainly ill-advised. 

However, even Benton was not willing to go 
to the length to which certain Western men 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 287 

went, who insisted upon all or nothing. He had 
become alarmed and angry over the intrigue for 
the admission of Texas and the proposed for- 
cible taking away of Mexican territory. The 
Northwestern Democrats wanted all Texas and 
all Oregon ; the Southeastern ones wished all 
the former and part of the latter. Benton 
then concluded that it would be best to take 
part of each ; for, although no friend to compro- 
mises, yet he was unwilling to jeopardize the 
safety of the Union as it was by seeking to make 
it still larger. Accordingly, he sympathized 
with the effort made by Calhoun while secretary 
of state to get the British to accept the line of 
49° as the frontier ; but the British government 
then rejected this proposition. In 1844 the 
Democrats made their campaign upon the issue 
of a fifty-four forty or fight;" and Polk, when 
elected, felt obliged to insist upon this campaign 
boundary. To this, however, Great Britain nat- 
urally would not consent ; it was, indeed, idle 
to expect her to do so, unless things should be 
kept as they were until a fairly large American 
population had grown up along the Pacific coast, 
and had thus put her in a position where she 
could hardly do anything else. Polk's admin- 
istration was neither capable nor warlike, how- 
ever well disposed to bluster ; and the secretary 
of state, the timid, shifty, and selfish politician, 



288 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Buchanan, naturally fond of facing both ways, 
was the last man to wish to force a quarrel on a 
high - spirited and determined antagonist like 
England. Accordingly, he made up his mind 
to back down and try for the line of 49°, as pro- 
posed by Calhoun, when in Tyler's cabinet ; and 
the English, for all their affected indifference, 
had been so much impressed by the warlike 
demonstrations in the United States, that they 
in turn were delighted, singing in a much lower 
key than before the " fifty-four forty " cry had 
been raised ; accordingly they withdrew their 
former pretensions to the Columbia River and 
accepted the offered compromise. Now, how- 
ever, came the question of getting the treaty 
through the Senate; and Buchanan sounded 
Benton, to see if he would undertake this task. 
Benton, worried over the Texas matter, was 
willing to recede somewhat from the very high 
ground he had taken, — although, of course, he 
insisted that he had been perfectly consistent 
throughout, and that the 49th parallel was the 
line he had all along been striving for. Under 
his lead the proposal for a treaty on the basis 
indicated was carried through the Senate, and 
the line in consequence ultimately became our 
frontier, in spite of the frantic opposition of 
the Northwestern Democrats, the latter hurling 
every sort of charge of bad faith and treachery 



BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH ENGLAND. 289 

at their Southern associates, who had joined with 
the Whigs in defeating them. Benton's speech 
in support of the proposal was pitched much 
lower than had been his previous ones ; and, a 
little forgetful of some of his own remarks, he 
was especially severe upon those members who 
denounced England and held up a picture of her 
real or supposed designs to excite and frighten 
the people into needless opposition to her. 

In its immediate effects the adoption of the 
49th parallel as the dividing line between the 
two countries was excellent, and entailed no loss 
of dignity on either. Yet, as there was no par- 
ticular reason why we should show any gener- 
osity in our diplomatic dealings with England, 
it may well be questioned whether it would not 
have been better to have left things as they were 
until we could have taken all. Wars are, of 
course, as a rule to be avoided ; but they are 
far better than certain kinds of peace. Every 
war in which we have been engaged, except 
the one with Mexico, has been justifiable in its 
origin ; and each one, without any exception 
whatever, has left us better off, taking both 
moral and material considerations into account, 
than we should have been if we had not waged 
it. 

19 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ABOLITIONISTS DANCE TO THE SLAVE 
BARONS' PIPING. 

In 1844 the Whig candidate for the Presi- 
dency, Henry Clay, was defeated by a Mr. Polk, 
the nominee of the Democracy. The majorities 
in several of the states were very small ; this 
was the case, for example in New York, the 
change in whose electoral vote would have also 
changed the entire result. 

Up to 1860 there were very few political con- 
tests in which the dividing lines between right 
and wrong so nearly coincided with those drawn 
between the two opposing parties as in that of 
1844. The Democrats favored the annexation of 
Texas, and the addition of new slave territory to 
the Union ; the Whigs did not. Almost every 
good element in the country stood behind Clay ; 
the vast majority of intelligent, high-minded, 
upright men supported him. Polk was backed 
by rabid Southern fire-eaters and slavery extern- 
sionists, who had deified negro bondage and ex- 
alted it beyond the Union, the Constitution, and 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 291 

everything else ; by the almost solid foreign 
vote, still unfit for the duties of American 
citizenship ; by the vicious and criminal classes 
in all the great cities of the North and in New 
Orleans ; by the corrupt politicians, who found 
ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged to 
their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gi- 
gantic frauds without which the election would 
have been lost ; and, lastly, he was also backed 
indirectly but most powerfully by the political 
Abolitionists. 

These Abolitionists had formed themselves 
into the Liberty party, and ran Birney for 
president; and though they polled but little 
over sixty thousand votes, yet as these were 
drawn almost entirely from the ranks of Clay's 
supporters, they were primarily responsible for 
his defeat; for the defections were sufficiently 
large to turn the scale in certain pivotal and 
closely contested states, notably New York. 
Their action in this case was wholly evil, alike 
in its immediate and its remote results; they 
simply played into the hands of the extreme 
slavery men like Calhoun, and became, for the 
time being, the willing accomplices of the latter. 
Yet they would have accomplished nothing had 
it not been for the frauds and outrages perpe- 
trated by the gangs of native and foreign-born 
ruffians in the great cities, under the leadership 
of such brutal rowdies as Isaiah Rynders. 



292 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

These three men, Calhoun, Birney, and Isaiah 
Rynders, may be taken as types of the classes 
that were chiefly instrumental in the election of 
Polk, and that must, therefore, bear the respon- 
sibility for all the evils attendant thereon, in- 
cluding among them the bloody and unrighteous 
War with Mexico. With the purpose of advan- 
cing the cause of abstract right, but with the re- 
sult of sacrificing all that was best, most honest, 
and most high -principled in national politics, 
the Abolitionists joined hands with Northern 
roughs and Southern slavocrats to elect the man 
who was, excepting Tyler, the very smallest of 
the line of small presidents who came in be- 
tween Jackson and Lincoln. * /^ 

Owing to a variety of causes, the Abolitionists 
have received an immense amount of hysterical 
praise, which they do not deserve, and have 
been credited with deeds done by other men, 
whom they in reality hampered and opposed 
rather than aided. After 1840 the professed 
Abolitionists formed but a small and compara- 
tively unimportant portion of the forces that 
were working towards the restriction and ulti- 
mate destruction of slavery ; and much of what 
they did was positively harmful to the cause for 
which they were fighting. Those of their num- 
ber who considered the Constitution as a league 
with death and hell, and who therefore advocated 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 293 

a dissolution of the Union, acted as rationally 
as would anti-polygamists nowadays if, to show 
their disapproval of Mormonism, they should 
advocate that Utah should be allowed to form 
a separate nation. The only hope of ultimately 
suppressing slavery lay in the preservation of 
the Union, and every Abolitionist who argued 
or signed a petition for its dissolution was doing 
as much to perpetuate the evil he complained 
of as if he had been a slave-holder. The Lib- 
erty party, in running Birney, simply commit- 
ted a political crime, evil in almost all its con- 
sequences ; they in no sense paved the way for 
the Republican party, or helped forward the 
anti-slavery cause, or hurt the existing organi- 
zations. Their effect on the Democracy was 
nil ; and all they were able to accomplish with 
the Whigs was to make them put forward for 
the ensuing campaign a slave-holder from Lou- 
isiana, with whom they were successful. Such 
were the remote results of their conduct; the 
immediate evils they produced have already 
been alluded to. They bore considerable re- 
semblance — except that, after all, they really 
did have a principle to contend for — to the 
political prohibitionists of the present day, who 
go into the third party organizations, and are, 
not even excepting the saloon-keepers them- 
selves, the most efficient allies on whom intern- 
perance and the liquor traffic can count. 



294 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

Anti-slavery men like Giddings, who sup- 
ported Clay, were doing a thousand-fold more 
effective work for the cause they had at heart 
than all the voters who supported Birney; or, 
to speak more accurately, they were doing all 
they could to advance the cause, and the others 
were doing all they could to hold it back. Lin- 
coln in 1860 occupied more nearly the ground 
held by Clay than that held by Birney ; and 
the men who supported the latter in 1844 were 
the prototypes of those who wished to oppose 
Lincoln in 1860, and only worked less hard be- 
cause they had less chance. The ultra Aboli- 
tionists discarded expediency, and claimed to 
act for abstract right, on principle, no matter 
what the results might be ; in consequence they 
accomplished very little, and that as much for 
harm as for good, until they ate their words, 
went counter to their previous course, thereby 
acknowledging it to be bad, and supported in 
the Republican party the men and principles 
they had so fiercely condemned. The Liberty 
party was not in any sense the precursor of the 
Republican party, which was based as much on 
expediency as on abstract right, and was there- 
fore able to accomplish good instead of harm. 
To say that the extreme Abolitionists triumphed 
in Republican success and were causes of it, is 
as absurd as it would be to call prohibitionists 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 295 

successful if, after countless futile efforts totally 
to prohibit the liquor traffic, and after savage 
denunciation of those who try to regulate it, 
they should then turn round and form a com- 
paratively insignificant portion of a victorious 
high-license party. 

Many people in speaking of the Abolitionists 
apparently forget that the national government, 
even under Republican rule, would never have 
meddled with slavery in the various states un- 
less as a war measure, made necessary by the 
rebellion into which the South was led by a 
variety of causes, of which slavery was chief, 
but among which there were others that were 
also prominent ; such as the separatist spirit of 
certain of the communities and the unscrupulous, 
treacherous ambition of such men as Davis, 
Floyd, and the rest. The Abolitionists' polit- 
ical organizations, such as the Liberty party, 
generally produced very little effect either way, 
and were scarcely thought of during the con- 
tests waged for freedom in Congress. The men 
who took a great and effective part in the fight 
against slavery were the men who remained 
within their respective parties ; like the Demo- 
crats Benton and Wilmot, or the Whigs Seward 
and Stevens. When a new party with more 
clearly defined principles was formed, they, for 
the most part, went into it ; but, like all other 



296 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

men who have ever had a really great influence, 
whether for good or bad, on American politics, 
they did not act independently of parties, but 
on the contrary kept within party lines, — al- 
though, of course, none of them were mere blind 
and unreasoning partisans. 

The plea that slavery was a question of prin- 
ciple, on which no compromise could be accepted, 
might have been made and could still be made 
on twenty other points, — woman suffrage, for 
instance. Of course, to give women their just 
rights does not by any means imply that they 
should necessarily be allowed to vote, any more 
than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship 
upon blacks and aliens must of necessity carry 
with it the same privilege. But there were until 
lately, and in some states there are now, laws on 
the statute - book in reference to women that 
are in principle as unjust, and that are quite as 
much the remnants of archaic barbarism as was 
the old slave code ; and though it is true that 
they do not work anything like the evil of 
the latter, they yet certainly work evil enough. 
The same laws that in one Southern state gave 
a master a right to whip a slave also allowed 
him to whip his wife, provided he used a stick 
no thicker than his little finger ; the legal per- 
mission to do the latter was even more outrage- 
ous than that to do the former, yet no one con* 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 297 

sidered it a ground for wishing a dissolution of 
the Union or for declaring against the existing 
parties. The folly of voting the Liberty ticket 
in 1844 differed in degree, but not at all in kind, 
from the folly of voting the Woman Suffrage 
ticket in 1884. 

The intrigue for the annexation of Texas, 
and for thereby extending the slave territory 
of the Union, had taken shape towards the 
close of Tyler's term of office, while Calhoun 
was secretary of state. Benton, as an aggres- 
sive Western man, desirous of seeing our ter- 
ritorial possessions extended in any direction, 
north or south, always hoped that in the end 
Texas might be admitted into the Union ; but 
he disliked seeing any premature steps taken, 
and was no party to the scheme of forcing 
an immediate annexation in the interests of 
slavery. Such immediate annexation was cer- 
tain, among other things, to bring us into grave 
difficulties not only with Mexico, but also with 
England, which was strongly inclined to take 
much interest of a practical sort in the fate of 
Texas, and would, of course, have done all it 
could to bring about the abolition of slavery 
in that state. The Southerners, desirous of 
increasing the slave domain, and always in a 
state of fierce alarm over the proximity of any 
free state that might excite a servile insurrec- 



298 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

tion, were impatient to add the Lone Star Re- 
public of the Rio Grande to the number of their 
states; the Southwesterners fell in with them, 
influenced, though less strongly, by the same 
motives, and also by the lust for new lands and 
by race hatred towards the Mexicans and tra- 
ditional jealousy of Great Britain ; and these 
latter motives induced many Northwesterners 
to follow suit. By a judicious harping on all 
these strings Jackson himself, whose name was 
still a mighty power among the masses, was in- 
duced to write a letter favoring instant and 
prompt annexation. 

This letter was really procured for political 
purposes. Tyler had completely identified him- 
self with the Democracy, and especially with 
its extreme separatist wing, to which Calhoun 
also belonged, and which had grown so as to 
be already almost able to take the reins. The 
separatist chiefs were intriguing for the presi- 
dency, and were using annexation as a cry that 
would help them ; and, failing in this attempt, 
many of the leaders were willing to break up 
the Union, and turn the Southern States, toge- 
ther with Texas, into a slave - holding confed- 
eracy. After Benton, the great champion of 
the old-style Union Democrats was Van Buren, 
who was opposed to immediate annexation, 
sharing the feeling that prevailed throughout 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 299 

the Northeast generally ; although in certain 
circles all through the country there were men 
at work in its favor, largely as a mere matter 
•of jobbery and from base motives, on account 
of speculations in Texan land and scrip, into 
which various capitalists and adventurers had 
gone rather extensively. Jackson, though a 
Southerner, warmly favored Van Buren, and 
was bitterly opposed to separatists ; but the 
Litter, by cunningly working on his feelings, 
without showing their own hands, persuaded 
him to write the letter mentioned, and promptly 
used it to destroy the chances of Van Buren, 
who was the man they chiefly feared ; and 
though Jackson, at last roused to what was 
going on, immediately announced himself as in 
favor of Van Buren's candidacy, it was too late 
to undo the mischief. 

Benton showed on this, as on many other oc- 
casions, much keener political ideas than his 
great political chief. He was approached by a 
politician, who himself was either one of those 
concerned in the presidential intrigues, or else 
one of their dupes, and who tried to win him 
over to take the lead on their side, compliment- 
ing him upon his former services to the cause 
of territorial expansion towards the southwest. 
Ordinarily the great Missourian was suscepti- 
ble enough to such flattery ; but on this occa- 



300 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

sion, preoccupied with the idea of an intrigue 
for the presidency, and indignant that there 
should be an effort made to implicate him in 
it, especially as it was mixed up with schemes 
of stock-jobbing and of disloyalty to the Union, 
he took fire at once, and answered with hot 
indignation, in words afterwards highly re- 
sented by his questioner, " that it was on the 
part of some an intrigue for the presidency, 
and a plot to dissolve the Union ; on the part of 
others, a Texas scrip and land speculation ; and 
that he was against it." The answer was 
published in the papers, and brought about a 
total break between Benton and the annexation 
party. 

He was now thoroughly on the alert, and 
actively opposed at all points the schemes of 
those whom he regarded as concerned in or in- 
stigating the intrigue. He commented harshly 
on Tyler's annual message, which made a strong 
plea for annexation, even at the cost of a war 
both with Great Britain and Mexico; also on 
Calhoun's letter to Lord Aberdeen, which was 
certainly a remarkable diplomatic document, — 
being a thesis on slavery and the benefits re- 
sulting from it. Tyler's object was to prepare 
the way for a secret treaty, which should secure 
the desired object. Benton, in the course of 
some severe strictures on his acts, said, very 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 301 

truly, that it was evidently the intention to 
keep the whole matter as secret as possible 
until the treaty was concluded, " and then to 
force its adoption for the purpose of increasing 
the area of slave territory, or to make its rejec- 
tion a cause for the secession of the Southern 
States ; and in either event and in all cases to 
make the question of annexation a controlling 
one in the nomination of presidential candi- 
dates, and also in the election itself." 

When the treaty proposed by the administra- 
tion was rejected, and when it became evident 
that neither Tyler nor Calhoun, the two most 
prominent champions of the extreme separa- 
tists, had any chance for the Democratic nom- 
ination, the disunion side of the intrigue was 
brought to the front in many of the Southern 
States, beginning of course with South Caro- 
lina. A movement was made for a convention 
of the Southern States, to be held in the inter- 
est of the scheme ; the key-note being struck in 
the cry of " Texas or disunion ! " But this con- 
vention was given up, on account of the strong 
opposition it excited in the so-called " Border 
States," — an opposition largely stirred up and 
led by Benton. Once more the haughty slave 
leaders of the Southeast had found that in the 
Missouri Senator they had an opponent whose 
fearlessness quite equaled their own, and whose 



802 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

stubborn temper and strength of purpose made 
him at least a match for themselves, in spite of 
all their dash and fiery impetuosity. It must 
have sounded strange, indeed, to Northern ears, 
accustomed to the harsh railings and insolent 
threats of the South Carolina senators, to hear 
one of the latter complaining that Benton's tone 
in the debate was arrogant, overbearing, and 
dictatorial towards those who were opposed to 
him. This same Senator, McDuffie, had been 
speaking of the proposed Southern meeting at 
Nashville ; and Benton warned him that such 
a meeting would never take place, and that he 
had mistaken the temper of the Tennesseans ; 
and also reminded him that General Jackson 
was still alive, and that the South Carolinians 
in particular must needs be careful if they 
hoped to agree with his followers, whose name 
was still legion, because he would certainly 
take the same position towards a disunion 
movement in the interests of slavery that he 
had already taken towards a nullification move- 
ment in the interests of free trade. "Preser- 
vation of the federal Union is as strong in the 
old Roman's heart now as ever ; and while, as 
a Christian, he forgives all that is past (if it 
were past), yet no old tricks under new names ! 
Texas disunion will be to him the same as 
tariff disunion ; and if he detects a Texas dis 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 303 

unionist nestling into his bed, I say again : Woe 
unto the luckless wight ! " Boldly and forcibly 
he went on to paint the real motives of the pro- 
moters of the scheme, and the real character of 
the scheme itself ; stating that, though mixed 
up with various speculative enterprises and 
with other intrigues, yet disunion was at the 
bottom of it all, and that already the cry had 
become, "Texas without the Union, rather 
than the Union without Texas ! " " Under the 
pretext of getting Texas into the Union the 
scheme is to get the South out of it. A 
Southern Confederacy stretching from the At- 
lantic to the Calif ornias. ... is the cherished 
vision of disappointed ambition." He bitterly 
condemned secession, as simply disunion begat 
by nullification, and went on to speak of his 
own attitude in apparently opposing the admis- 
sion of Texas, which he had always desired to 
see become a part of the Union, and which he 
had always insisted rightfully belonged to us, 
and to have been given away by Monroe's treaty 
with Spain. " All that is intended and foreseen. 
The intrigue for the presidency was the first act 
in the drama ; the dissolution of the Union the 
second. And I, who hate intrigue and love the 
Union, can only speak of the intriguers and dis- 
unionists with warmth and indignation. The 
oldest advocate for the recovery of Texas, I 



304 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

must be allowed to speak in just terms of the 
criminal politicians who prostituted the ques- 
tion of its recovery to their own base purposes, 
and delayed its success by degrading and dis- 
gracing it. A Western man, and coming from 
a state more than any other interested in the 
recovery of this country, so unaccountably 
thrown away by the treaty of 1819, I must be 
allowed to feel indignant at seeing Atlantic 
politicians seizing upon it, and making it a sec- 
tional question for the purples of ambition 
and disunion. I have spoken warmly of these 
plotters and intriguers ; but I have not per- 
mitted their conduct to alter my own, or to re- 
lax my zeal for the recovery of the sacrificed 
country. I have helped to reject the disunion 
treaty ; and that obstacle being removed, I have 
brought in the bill which will insure the recov- 
ery of Texas, with peace and honor, and with 
the Union." 

It is important to remember, in speaking of 
his afterwards voting to admit Texas, that this 
was what he had all along favored, and that he 
now opposed it only on account of special cir- 
cumstances. In both cases he was right ; for, 
slavery or no slavery, it would have been a 
most unfortunate thing for us, and still worse 
for the Texans, if the latter had been allowed 
to develop into an independent nation. Benton 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 305 

deserves the greatest credit for the way in 
which he withstood the ignorant popular feel- 
ing of his own section in regard to Tyler's pro- 
posed treaty ; and not only did he show himself 
able to withstand pressure from behind him, 
but also prompt in resenting threats made by 
outsiders. When McDuffie told him that the 
remembrance of his attitude on the bill would, 
to his harm, meet him on some future day, like 
the ghost that appeared to Brutus at Philippi, 
he answered : — 

I can promise the ghost and his backers that if the 
fight goes against me at this new Philippi, with which 
I am threatened, and the enemies of the American 
Union triumph over me as the enemies of Roman lib- 
erty triumphed over Brutus and Cassius, I shall not 
fall upon my sword, as Brutus did, though Cassius be 
killed, and run it through my own body ; but I shall 
save it and save myself for another day and another 
use, — for the day when the battle of the disunion of 
these states is to be fought, not with words but with 
iron, and for the hearts of the traitors who appear in 
arms against their country. 

Such a stern, defiant, almost prophetic warn- 
ing did more to help the Union cause than vol- 
umes of elaborate constitutional argument, and 
it would have been well for ths Northern States 
had they possessed men as capable of uttering 
it as was the iron Westerner. Benton always 



806 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

showed at Lis best when the honor or integrity 
of the nation was menaced, whether by foes from 
without or by foes from within. On such occa- 
sions his metal always rang true. When there 
was any question of breaking faith with the 
Union, or of treachery towards it, his figure al- 
wa}^s loomed up as one of the chief in the ranks 
of its defenders ; and his follies and weaknesses 
sink out of sight when we think of the tremen- 
dous debt which the country owes him for his 
sorely tried and unswerving loyalty. 

The treaty alluded to by Benton in his speech 
against the abortive secession movement was 
the one made with Texas while Calhoun was 
secretary of state, and submitted to the Senate 
by Tyler, with a message as extraordinary as 
some of his secretary's utterances. The treaty 
was preposterously unjust and iniquitous. It 
provided for the annexation of Texas, and also 
of a very large portion of Mexico, to which 
Texas had no possible title, and this without 
consulting Mexico in any way whatever ; Cal- 
houn advancing the plea that it was necessary 
to act immediately on account of the danger 
that* Texas was in of falling under the control of 
England, and therefore having slavery abolished 
within its borders ; while Tyler blandly an- 
nounced that we had acquired title to the ceded 
territory — which belonged to one power and 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 307 

was ceded to us by another — through his sig- 
nature to the treaty, and that, pending its rati- 
fication by tlie Senate, he had dispatched troops 
to the scene of action to protect the ceded land 
44 from invasion," — the territory to be thus 
protected from Mexican invasion being then 
and always having been part and parcel of 
Mexico. 

Benton opposed the ratification of the treaty 
in a very strong speech, during which he merci- 
lessly assailed both Tyler and Calhoun. The 
conduct of the former he dismissed with the con- 
temptuous remark that he had committed 44 a 
caper about equal to the mad freaks with which 
the unfortunate Emperor Paul, of Russia, was 
accustomed to astonish Europe ; " and roughly 
warned him to be careful how he tried to imi- 
tate Jackson's methods, because in heroic imi- 
tations there was no middle ground, and if he 
failed to fill the role of hero he would then per- 
force find himself playing that of harlequin. 
Calhoun received more attention, for he was far 
more worthy of a foeman's steel than was his 
nominal superior, and Benton exposed at length 
the willful exaggeration and the perversion of 
the truth of which the Carolinian had been 
guilty in trying to raise the alarm of English 
interference in Texas, for the purpose of excus- 
ing the haste with which the treaty was carried 
through. 



308 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

He showed at length the outrage we should 
inflict upon Mexico by seizing " two thousand 
miles of her territory, without a word of expla- 
nation with her, and by virtue of a treaty with 
Texas to which she was no party ; " and he 
conclusively proved, making use of his own 
extensive acquaintance with history, especially 
American history, that the old Texas, the only 
territory that the Texans themselves or we 
could claim with any shadow of right, made 
but a fraction of the territory now " ceded " to 
us. He laughed at the idea of calling the ter- 
ritory Texas, and speaking of its forcible cut- 
ting off as re-annexation, " Humboldt calls it 
New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo 
Santander ; and the civilized world may qualify 
this re-annexation by some odious and terrible 
epithet . . . robbery ; " then he went on to draw 
a biting contrast between our treatment of Mex- 
ico and our treatment of England. " Would 
we take two thousand miles of Canada in the 
same way ? I presume not. And why not ? 
Why not treat Great Britain and Mexico alike ? 
Why not march up to 'fifty-four forty ' as cour- 
ageously as we march upon the Rio Grande ? 
Because Great Britain is powerful and Mexico 
weak, — a reason which may fail in policy as 
much as in morals." Also he ridiculed the flurry 
of fear into which the Southern slave-holders 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 309 

affected to be cast by the dread of England's 
hostility to slavery, when they had just acqui- 
esced in making a treaty with her by which we 
bound ourselves to help to put down the slave- 
trade. He then stated his own position, show- 
ing why he wished us to have the original 
Texan lands, if we could get them honorably, 
and without robbing Mexico of new territory ; 
and at the same time sneered at Calhoun and 
Tyler because they had formerly favored the 
Monroe treaty, by which we abandoned our 
claims to them : — 

We want Texas, that is to say, the Texas of La 
Salle ; and we want it for great natural reasons, 
obvious as day, and permanent as nature. We want 
it because it is geographically appurtenant to our 
division of North America, essential to our political, 
commercial, and social system, and because it would 
be detrimental and injurious to us to have it fall into 
the hands or sink under the domination of any for- 
eign power. For these reasons I was against sacrific- 
ing the country when it was thrown away, — and 
thrown away by those who are now so suddenly pos- 
sessed of a fury to get it back. For these reasons I 
am for getting it back whenever it can be done with 
peace and honor, or even at the price of just war 
against any intrusive European power ; but I am 
against all disguise and artifice, — against all pre- 
texts, — and especially against weak and groundless 
pretexts, discreditable to ourselves and offensive to 



810 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

others, too thin and shallow not to be seen through 
by every beholder, and merely invented to cover un- 
worthy purposes. 

The treaty was rejected by an overwhelming 
vote, although Buchanan led a few of his time- 
serving comrades from the North to the sup- 
port of the extreme Southern element. Benton 
then tried, but failed, to get through, a bill pro- 
viding for a joint agreement between Mexico, 
Texas, and the United States to settle definitely 
all boundary questions. Meanwhile the presi- 
dential election occurred, with the result already 
mentioned. The separatist and annexationist 
Democrats, the extreme slavery wing of the 
party, defeated Van Buren and nominated Polk, 
who was their man ; the Whigs nominated Clay, 
who was heartily opposed to all the schemes of 
the disunion and extreme slavery men, and who, 
if elected, while he might very properly hnve 
consented to the admission of Texas with its 
old boundaries, would never have brought on a 
war nor have attempted to add a vast extent of 
new slave territory to the Union. Clay would 
have been elected, and the slavery disunionists 
defeated, if in the very nick of time the Aboli- 
tionists had not stepped in to support the latter, 
and by their blindness in supporting Birney 
given the triumph to their own most bitter op- 
ponents. Then the Abolitionists, having played 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 311 

their only card, and played it badly, had to sit 
still and see what evil their acts had produced ; 
they had accomplished just as much as men 
generally do accomplish when they dance to the 
tune that their worst foes play. 

Polk's election gave an enormous impulse to 
the annexation movement, and made it doubly 
and trebly difficult for any one to withstand it. 
The extreme disunion and slavery men, of course, 
hated Benton, himself a Southwesterner from a 
slave-holding state, with peculiar venom, on ac- 
count of his attitude, very justly regarding him 
as the main obstacle in their path ; and the din 
and outcry raised against all who opposed the 
schemes of the intriguers was directed with 
especial fury against the Missourian. He was 
accused of being allied to the Whigs, of wishing 
to break up the Democracy, and of many other 
things. Indeed, Benton's own people were very 
largely against him, and it must always be re- 
membered that whereas Northeastern statesmen 
were certain to be on the popular side in taking 
a stand against the extreme pro -slavery men, 
Benton's position was often just the reverse. 
With them it was politic to do right ; with 
him it was not ; and for this reason the praise 
awarded the latter should be beyond measure 
greater than that awarded to the former. 

Still, there can be little question that he was 



312 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

somewhat, even although only slightly, influ- 
enced by the storm of which he had to bear 
the brunt ; indeed, he would have been more 
than human if he had not been ; and probably 
this outside pressure was one among the causes 
that induced him to accept a compromise in the 
matter, which took effect just before Polk was 
inaugurated. The House of Representatives had 
passed a resolution giving the consent of Con- 
gress to the admission of Texas as a state, and 
allowing it the privilege of forming four addi- 
tional states out of its territory, whenever it 
should see fit. The line of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, 36° 30', was run through this new terri- 
tory, slavery being prohibited in the lands lying 
north of it, and permissible or not, according to 
the will of the state seeking admission, in those 
lying south of it. Benton meanwhile had intro- 
duced a bill merely providing that negotiations 
should be entered into with Texas for its admis- 
sion, the proposed treaty or articles of agreement 
to be submitted to the Senate or to Congress. 
He thereby kept the control in the hands of the 
legislature, which the joint resolution did not ; 
and moreover, as he said in his speech, he wished 
to provide for due consideration being shown 
Mexico in the arrangement of the boundary, and 
for the matter being settled by commissioners. 
Neither resolution nor bill could get through 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 313 

by itself ; and accordingly it was proposed to 
combine both into one measure, leaving the 
president free to choose either plan. To this 
proposition Benton finally consented, it being 
understood that, as only three days of Tyler's 
term remained, the execution of the act would 
be left to the in-coining president, and that the 
latter would adopt Benton's plans. The friends 
of the admission of Texas assured the doubtful 
voters that such would be the case. Polk him- 
self gave full assurance that he would appoint 
a commission, as provided by Benton's bill, if 
passed, with the House resolution as an alterna- 
tive ; and McDuffie, Calhoun's friend, and the 
senator from South Carolina, announced with- 
out reserve that Calhoun — for Tyler need not 
be considered in the matter, after it had been 
committed to the great nullifier — would not 
have the " audacity " to try to take the settle- 
ment of the question away from the president, 
who was to be inaugurated on the fourth of 
March. On the strength of these assurances, 
which, if made good, would, of course, have ren- 
dered the " alternative " a merely nominal one, 
Benton supported the measure, which was then 
passed. Contrary to all expectation, Calhoun 
promptly acted upon the legislative clause, and 
Polk made no effort to undo what the former 
had done. This caused intense chagrin and 



814 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

anger to the Bentonians ; but they should cer- 
tainly have taken such a contingency into ac- 
count, and though they might with much show 
of reason say that they had been tricked into 
acting as they had done, yet it is probable that 
the immense pressure from behind had made 
Benton too eager to follow any way he could 
find that would take him out of the position 
into which his conscience had led him. No 
amount of pressure would have made him de- 
liberately sanction a wrong ; but it did render 
him a little less wary in watching to see that 
the right was not infringed upon. It was 
most natural that lie should be anxious to find 
a common ground for himself and his constit- 
uents to stand on ; but it is to be regretted that 
this anxiety to find a common ground should 
have made him willing to trust blindly to vague 
pledges and promises, which he ought to have 
known would not be held in the least binding 
by those on whose behalf they were supposed 
to be made. 

Acting under this compromise measure Texas 
was admitted, and the foundation for our war 
with Mexico was laid. Calhoun, under whom 
this was done, nevertheless sincerely regretted 
the war itself, and freely condemned Polk's ad- 
ministration for bringing it on ; his own posi- 
tion being that he desired to obtain without a 



ABOLITIONISTS AND SLAVE BARONS. 315 

war what it was impossible we should get except 
at the cost of one. Benton, who had all along 
consistently opposed doing a wrong to Mexico, 
attacked the whole war party, and in a strong 
and bitter speech accused Calhoun of being 
the cause of the contest ; showing plainly that, 
whatever the ex-secretary of state might say 
in regard to the acts immediately precipitating 
the conflict, he himself was responsible as being 
in truth their original cause. While stating his 
conviction, however, that Calhoun was the real 
author of the war, Benton added that he did not 
believe that war was his object, although an in- 
evitable incident of the course he had pursued. 
Although heartily opposed to the war in its 
origin, Benton very properly believed in prose- 
cuting it with the utmost vigor when once we 
were fairly in ; and it was mainly owing to him 
that the proposed policy of a " masterly inactiv- 
ity " was abandoned, and the scheme of push- 
ing straight for the city of Mexico adopted in 
its stead. Indeed, it was actually proposed to 
make him lieutenant-general, and therefore the 
commander-in-chief of our forces in Mexico; 
but this was defeated in the Senate, very for- 
tunately, as it would have been a great outrage 
upon Scott, Taylor, and every other soldier with 
real military training. It seems extraordinary 
that Benton himself should not have seen the 
absurdity and wrong of such a proposition. 



316 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

The wonderful hardihood and daring shown 
in the various expeditions against Mexico, espe- 
cially in those whereby her northwest territory 
was wrested from her, naturally called forth 
all Benton's sympathy ; and one of his best 
speeches was that made to welcome Doniphan's 
victorious volunteers after their return home 
from their famous march to Chihuahua. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 

Hardly was Polk elected before it became 
evident to Benton and the other Jacksonians 
that the days of the old Union or Nationalist 
Democracy were over, and that the separatist 
and disunion elements within the party had 
obtained the upper hand. The first sign of the 
new order of things was the displacement of 
Blair, editor of the " Globe," the Democratic 
newspaper organ. Blair was a strong Unionist, 
and had been bitterly hostile to Calhoun and 
the Nullifiers. He had also opposed Tyler, the 
representative of those states-rights and separa- 
tist Democrats, who by their hostility to Jack- 
son had been temporarily driven into the Whig 
camp, and who, finding themselves in very un- 
congenial society, and seeing, moreover, that 
their own principles were gradually coming to 
the front in the old party, had begun drifting 
back again into it. Polk's chances of election 
were so precarious that he was most anxious to 
conciliate the Separatists ; besides which he at 



318 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

heart sympathized with their views, and had 
himself been brought forward in the Demo- 
cratic convention to beat the National candi- 
date, Van Buren. Moreover, Tyler withdrew 
from the contest in his favor ; in part payment 
for which help, soon after the election, Blair 
was turned out, and Ritchie of Virginia, a man 
whose views suited the new Democratic leaders, 
was put in his place ; to the indignation not 
only of Benton, but also of Jackson himself, 
then almost on his death-bed. Of course the 
break between the two wings was as yet by no 
means complete. Polk needed the Union Dem- 
ocrats, and the latter were still in good party 
standing. Benton himself, as has been seen, 
was offered the command of all the forces in 
Mexico, but the governmental policy, and the 
attitude of the party in Congress after 1844, 
were widely different from what they had been 
while Jackson's influence was supreme, or while 
the power he left behind him was wielded by a 
knot of Union men. 

From this time the slavery question dwarfed 
all others, and was the one with which Benton, 
as well as other statesmen, had mainly to deal. 
He had been very loath to acknowledge that it 
was ever to become of such overshadowing im« 
portance ; until late in his life he had not 
realized that, interwoven with the disunionist 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 319 

movement, it had grown so as to become in 
reality the one and only question before the 
people ; but, this once thoroughly understood, he 
henceforth devoted his tremendous energies to 
the struggle with it. He possessed such phe- 
nomenal power of application and of study, and 
his capacity for and his delight in work were 
so extraordinary, that he was able at the same* 
time to grapple with many other subjects of 
importance, and to present them in a way that 
showed he had thoroughly mastered them both 
in principle and detail, — as witness his speech 
in favor of giving the control of the coast survey 
to the navy ; but henceforth the importance of 
his actions lay in their relation to the slavery 
extension movements. 

He had now entered on what may fairly be 
called the heroic part of his career ; for it would 
be difficult to choose any other word to express 
our admiration for the unflinching and defiant 
courage with which, supported only by con- 
science and by his loving loyalty to the Union, 
he battled for the losing side, although by so 
doing he jeopardized and eventually ruined his 
political prospects, being finally, as punishment 
for his boldness in opposing the dominant fac- 
tion of the Missouri Democracy, turned out of 
the Senate, wherein he had passed nearly half his- 
life. Indeed, his was one of those natures that 



320 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

show better in defeat than in victory. In his 
career there were many actions that must com- 
mand our unqualified admiration ; such were 
his hostility to the Nullifiers, wherein, taking 
into account his geographical location and his 
refusal to compromise, he did better than any 
.other public man, not even excepting Jackson 
and Webster ; his belief in honest money ; and 
his attitude towards all questions involving the 
honor or the maintenance and extension of the 
Union. But in all these matters he was backed 
more or less heartily by his state, and he had 
served four terms in the federal Senate as the 
leading champion and representative, not alone 
of Missouri, but also of the entire West. When, 
however, the slavery question began to enter 
upon its final stage, Benton soon found himself 
opposed to a large and growing faction of the 
Missouri Democracy, which increased so rapidly 
that it soon became dominant. But he never 
for an instant yielded his convictions, even when 
he saw the ground being thus cut from under 
his feet, fighting for the right as sturdily as 
ever, facing his fate fearlessly, and going down 
without a murmur. The contrast between the 
conduct towards the slavery disunionists of this 
Democrat from a slave - holding state, with a 
hostile majority at home against him, and the 
conduct of Webster, a Whig, enthusiastically 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 321 

backed by bis own free state, in tbe same issue, 
is a painful one for tbe latter. Indeed, on any 
moral point, Benton need bave no cause to fear 
comparison witb any of bis great rivals in tbe 
political arena. During bis career, tbe United 
States Senate was perhaps tbe most influential, 
and certainly tbe ablest legislative body in the 
world ; and after Jackson's presidency came to 
an end tbe really great statesmen and political 
leaders of tbe country were to be found in it, 
and not in tbe executive chair. The period 
during which the great Missourian was so prom- 
inent a figure in our politics, and which lasted 
up to the time of the Civil War, might very ap- 
propriately be known in our history as the time 
of the supremacy of the Senate. Such senators 
as Benton, Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, and 
later on Douglas, Seward, and Sumner, fairly 
towered above presidents like the obscure South- 
erners, Tyler and Polk, or the truckling, time- 
serving Northern politicians, Pierce and Buch- 
anan. During the long interval coming be- 
tween the two heroic ages of American history, 
— tbe age of Washington and Franklin, and the 
age of Lincoln and Grant, — it was but rarely 
that the nation gave its greatest gift to its best 
or its greatest son. 

Benton had come into the Senate at the same 
time that Missouri was admitted into tbe Union, 

21 



322 THOMAS HART DENTON. 

with thanks, therefore, to the same measure, the 
Missouri Compromise bill. This shut out slav- 
ery from all territory north of the line of 36° 30', 
and did not make it obligatory even where it was 
permissible ; and the immediate cause of Ben- 
ton's downfall was his courage and persistency 
in defending the terms of this compromise from 
the attacks of the Southern slavery extension- 
ists and disunionists. The pro-slavery feeling 
was running ever higher and higher through- 
out the South ; and his stand on this question 
aroused the most furious anger among a con- 
stantly increasing number of his constituents, 
and made him the target for bitter and savage 
assaults on the part of his foes, the spirit of hos- 
tility against him being carried to such length as 
finally almost to involve him in an open brawl 
on the floor of the Senate with one of his col- 
leagues, Foote, who, like his fellow fire-eaters, 
found that Benton was not a man who could be 
bullied. Indeed, his iron will and magnificent 
physique both fitted him admirably for such a 
contest against odds, and he seems to have en- 
tered into it with a positive zest. 

The political Abolitionists having put Polk in 
power, their action bore fruit after its kind, and 
very soon the question had to be faced, as to 
what should be done with the immense tracts of 
territory conquered from Mexico. Benton op- 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 323 

posed, as being needless and harmful, the Wil- 
mot Proviso, which forbade the introduction of 
slavery into any part of the territory so acquired. 
He argued, and produced in evidence the laws 
and Constitution of Mexico, that the soil of Cal- 
ifornia and Mexico was already free, and that as 
slavery would certainly never be, and indeed 
could never be, introduced into either territory, 
the agitation of the question could only result 
in harm. Calhoun and the other extreme slav- 
ery leaders welcomed the discussion over this 
proviso, which led Benton to remark that the 
Abolitionists and the Nullifiers were necessary 
to each other, — the two blades of a pair of 
shears, neither of which could cut until they 
were joined together. 

When Calhoun introduced his famous reso- 
lutions declaring that Congress had no power 
to interfere with slavery in the territories, and 
therefore no power to prevent the admission 
of new states except on the condition of their 
prohibiting slavery within their limits, Benton 
promptly and strongly opposed them as being 
firebrands needlessly thrown to inflame the pas- 
sions of the extremists, and, moreover, as being 
disunionist in tendency. The following is his 
own account of what then took place : " Mr. 
Calhoun said he had expected the support of 
Mr. Benton ' as the representative of a slave- 



324 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

holding state.' Mr. Benton answered that it 
was impossible that he could have expected 
such a thing. 'Then,' said Mr. Calhoun, 'I 
shall know where to find that gentleman.' To 
which Mr. Benton said : ' I shall be found in 
the right place, — on the side of my country 
and the Union.' This answer, given on that day 
and on the spot, is one of the incidents of his life 
which Mr. Benton will wish posterity to remem- 
ber." We can easily pardon the vanity which 
wishes and hopes that such an answer, given 
under such conditions, may be remembered. 
Indeed, Benton's attitude throughout all this 
period should never be forgotten ; and the words 
he spoke in answer to Calhoun marked him as 
the leader among those Southerners who held 
the nation above any section thereof, even their 
own, and whose courage and self-sacrifice in the 
cause of the Union entitled them to more praise 
than by right belongs to any equal number of 
Northerners ; those Southerners who in the civil 
war furnished Farragut, Thomas, Bristow, and 
countless others as loyal as they were brave. 
The effect of Benton's teachings and the still 
remaining influence of his intense personality 
did more than aught else to keep Missouri 
within the Union, when her sister states went 
out of it. 

Benton always regarded much of the slavery 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 325 

agitation in the South as being political in char- 
acter, and the result of the schemes of ambitious 
and unscrupulous leaders. He believed that 
Calhoun had introduced a set of resolutions that 
were totally uncalled for, simply for the purpose 
of carrying a question to the Slave States on 
which they could be formed into a unit against 
the Free States ; and there is much to be said in 
support of his view. Certainly the resolutions 
mark the beginning of the first great slavery 
agitation throughout the Southern States, which 
was engineered and guided for their own ends by 
politicians like Jefferson Davis. These resolu- 
tions were absolutely inconsistent with many of 
Calhoun's previous declarations ; and that fact 
was also sharply commented on by Benton in his 
speeches and writings. He also criticised with 
caustic severity Calhoun's statements that he 
wished to save the Union by forcing the North 
to take a position so agreeable to the South 
as to make the latter willing not to separate. 
He showed that Calhoun's proposed " constitu- 
tional " and " peaceable " methods of bringing 
this about by prohibiting commercial inter- 
course between the two sections would them- 
selves be flagrant breaches of the Constitution 
and acts of disunion, — all the more so as it was 
proposed to discriminate in favor of the North- 
west as against the Northeast. Calhoun wished 



326 THOMAS BART BENTON. 

to bring about a convention of the Southern 
States, in order to secure the necessary unity of 
action ; and one of the main obstacles to the 
success of the plan was Missouri's refusal to take 
part in it. Great efforts were made to win her 
over, and to beat down Benton ; the extreme 
pro-slavery men honoring him with a hatred 
more intense than that they harbored towards 
any Northerner. Some of Calhoun's recent bi- 
ographers have credited him with being really a 
Union man at heart. It seems absolutely impos- 
sible that this could have been the case ; and 
the supposition is certainly not compatible with 
the belief that he retained his right senses. Ben- 
ton characterizes his system of slavery agitation, 
very truthfully, as being one " to force issues 
upon the North under the pretext of self-de- 
fense, and to sectionalize the South, prepara- 
tory to disunion, through the instrumentality of 
sectional conventions, composed wholly of dele- 
gates from the slave-holding states." 

When the question of the admission of Ore- 
gon came up, Calhoun attempted to apply to it 
a dogma wholly at variance with all his former 
positions on the subject. This was the theory 
of the self-extension of the slavery part of the 
Constitution to the territories; that is, he held 
that the exclusion of slavery from any part of 
the new territory was itself a subversion of the 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 327 

Constitution. Such a dogma was so monstrous 
in character, so illogical, so inconsistent with all 
his former theories, and so absolutely incompat- 
ible with the preservation of the Union, that it 
renders it impossible to believe that his assev- 
erations of devotion to the latter were uttered 
honestly or in good faith. Most modern readers 
will agree with Benton that he deliberately 
worked to bring about secession. 

Meanwhile the Missourian had gained an ally 
of his own stamp in the Senate. This was 
Houston, from the new State of Texas, who rep- 
resented in that state, like Andrew Jackson in 
Tennessee, and Benton himself in Missouri, the 
old Nationalist Democracy, which held the 
preservation of the Union dear above all other 
things. Houston was a man after Benton's 
own heart, and was thoroughly Jacksonian in 
type. He was rough, honest, and fearless, a 
devoted friend and a vengeful enemy, and he 
promised that combination of stubborn courage 
and capacity of devotion to an ideal that ren- 
ders a man an invaluable ally in a fight against 
odds for principle. 

After much discussion and amendment, the 
Oregon bill, containing a radical anti-slavery 
clause, passed both houses and became a law in 
spite of the violent opposition of some of the 
Southerners, headed by Calhoun^ who announced 



328 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

that the great strife between the North and the 
South was ended, and that the time had come 
for the South to show that, though she prized 
the Union, yet there were matters which she 
regarded as of greater importance than its 
preservation. His ire was most fiercely excited 
by the action of Benton and Houston in sup- 
porting the bill, and after his return to South 
Carolina he denounced them by name as traitors 
to the South, — u a denunciation," says Benton, 
"which they took for a distinction ; as what he 
called treason to the South they knew to be al- 
legiance to the Union." When it was proposed 
to extend by bill the Constitution of the United 
States into the territories, with a view to car- 
rying slavery into California, Utah, and New 
Mexico, Benton was again opposed to Calhoun. 
As a matter of course, too, he was the stoutest 
opponent of the Southern convention and other 
similar disunion movements that were begin- 
ning to take shape throughout the South, insti- 
gated by the two rank secession states of South 
Carolina and Mississippi. 

Most of the momentous questions springing 
out of the war with Mexico were left by Polk 
as legacies to his successor, when the former 
went out of office, after an administration that 
Benton criticised with extreme sharpness, al- 
though he tried to shield the president by cast- 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 329 

ing the blame for his actions upon his cabinet 
advisers ; characterizing the Mexican War as 
one of " speculation and intrigue," and as the 
" great blot " of his four years' term of office, 
and ridiculing the theory that we were acting 
in self-defense, or that our soil had been in- 
vaded. In 1848 the Democrats nominated 
Cass, a Northern pro-slavery politician of moder- 
ate abilities, and the Whigs put up and elected 
old Zachary Taylor, the rough frontier soldier 
and Louisiana slave-holder. The political Abo- 
litionists again took a hand in the contest, but 
this time abandoned their abolition theories, 
substituting instead thereof the prohibition of 
slavery in the new territories. They derived 
much additional importance from their alliance 
with a disappointed politician in the pivotal 
State of New York ; and in this case, in sharp 
contrast to the result in 1844, their actions 
worked good, and not evil. Van Buren, cha- 
grined and angered by the way he was treated 
by the regular Democrats, organized a revolt 
against them, and used the banner of the new 
Free Soil party as one under which to rally his 
adherents. This movement was of consequence 
mainly in New York, and there it soon became 
little more than a mere fight between the two 
sections of the Democracy. Benton himself 
visited this all-important state to try to patch 



380 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

up matters, but be fortunately failed. Tbe fac- 
tions proved very nearly equal in strengtb ; and 
as a consequence tbe Wbigs carried tbe state 
and tbe election, and once more beld tbe reins 
of government. 

When a Louisiana slave-bolder was tbus in- 
stalled in tbe White House, tbe extreme South- 
ern men may have thought that they were sure 
of him as an ally in their fight against freedom. 
But, if so, they soon found they had reckoned 
without their host, for the election of Taylor 
affords a curious, though not solitary, instance 
in which the American people builded better 
than they knew in choosing a chief executive. 
Nothing whatever was known of his political 
theories, and the Whigs nominated him simply 
because he was a successful soldier, likely to take 
the popular fancy. But once elected he turned 
out to have tbe very qualities we then most 
needed in a president, — a stout heart, shrewd 
common sense, aud thorough-going devotion to 
the Union. Although with widely different 
training from Benton, and nominally differing 
from him in politics, he was yet of tbe same 
stamp both in character and principles ; both 
were Union Southerners, not in the least afraid 
of openly asserting their opinions, and, if neces- 
sary, of making them good by their acts. In 
his first and only annual message, Taylor ex- 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 331 

pressed, upon all the important questions of the 
day, views that were exactly similar to those 
advanced before or after by Benton himself in 
the Senate ; and he used similar emphasis and 
plainness of speech. He declared the Union to 
be the greatest of blessings, which he would 
maintain in every way against whatever dan- 
gers might threaten it ; he advised the admis- 
sion of California, which wished to come in 
as a free state ; he thought that the territories 
of Utah and New Mexico should be left as they 
were; and he warned the Texans, who were 
blustering about certain alleged rights to New 
Mexican soil, and threatening to take them by 
force of arms, that this could not be permitted, 
and that the matter would have to be settled 
by the judicial authority of the United States. 
Benton heartily indorsed the message. Natu- 
rally, it was bitterly assailed by the disunionists 
under Calhoun ; and even Clay, who entirely 
lacked Taylor's backbone, was dissatisfied with 
it as being too extreme in tone, and conflicting 
with his proposed compromise measures. These 
same compromise measures brought the Ken- 
tucky leader into conflict with Benton also, es- 
pecially on the point of their interfering with 
the immediate admission of California into the 
Union. 

This is not the place to discuss Clay's pro- 



332 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

posed compromise, which was not satisfactory to 
the extreme Southerners, and still less so to the 
Unionists and anti-slavery men. It consisted 
of five different parts, relating to the recovery 
of fugitive slaves, the suppression of the slave- 
trade in the District of Columbia, the admis- 
sion of California as a state, and the territorial 
condition of Utah and New Mexico. Benton 
opposed it as mixing up incongruous measures ; 
as being unjust to California, inasmuch as it 
confounded the question of her admission with 
the general slavery agitation in the United 
States ; and above all as being a concession or 
capitulation to the spirit of disunion and seces- 
sion, and therefore a repetition of the error of 
1833. Benton always desired to meet and check 
any disunion movement at the very outset, and, 
if he had had his way, would have carried mat- 
ters with a high hand whenever it came to deal- 
ing with threats of such a proceeding ; and 
therein he was perfectly right. In regard to 
the proposed compromise he believed in dealing 
with each question as it arose, beginning with 
the admission of California, and refusing to 
have any compromise at all with those who 
threatened secession. 

The slavery extensionists endeavored to have 
the Missouri compromise line stretched on to 
the Pacific. Benton, avowing his belief that 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 333 

slavery was an evil, opposed this, and gave his 
reasons why he did not wish to see the line 
which had been used to divide free and slave 
soil in the French or Louisiana purchase ex- 
tended into the lands won from Mexico. Slav- 
ery had always existed in Louisiana, while 
it had been long abolished in Mexico. " The 
Missouri compromise line, extending to New 
Mexico and California, though astronomically 
the same as that in Louisiana, would be polit- 
ically directly the opposite. One went through 
a territory all slave, and made one half free ; 
the other would go through territory all free, 
and make one half slave." In fact Benton, as 
he grew older, unlike most of his compatriots, 
gained a clearer insight into the effects of slav- 
ery. This was shown in his comments upon 
Calhoun's statement, made in the latter's last 
speech, in reference to the unequal development 
of the North and South ; which, Benton said, 
was partly owing to the existence of " slavery 
itself, which he (Calhoun) was so anxious to 
extend." It was in this same speech that Cal- 
houn hinted at his plan for a dual executive, — 
one president from the Free and one from the 
Slave States, — a childish proposition, that Ben- 
ton properly treated as a simple absurdity. 

In his speech against the compromise, Benton 
discussed it, section by section, with great force, 



334 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

and with his usual blunt truthfulness. His 
main count was the injustice done to California 
by delaying her admittance, and making it de- 
pendent upon other issues ; but he made almost 
as strong a point against the effort to settle the 
claims of Texas to New Mexican territory. The 
Texan threats to use force he treated with 
cavalier indifference, remarking that as long as 
New Mexico was a territory, and therefore be- 
longed to the United States, any controversy 
with her was a controversy with the federal 
government, which would know how to play 
her part by " defending her territory from in- 
vasion, and her people from violence," — a 
hint that had a salutary effect upon the Tex- 
ans ; in fact the disunionists, generally, were 
not apt to do much more than threaten while a 
Whig like Taylor was backed up by a Democrat 
like Benton. He also pointed out that it was 
not necessary, however desirable, to make a 
compact with Texas about the boundaries, as 
they could always be settled, whether she 
wished it or not, by a suit before the Supreme 
Court; and again intimated that a little show of 
firmness would remove all danger of a collision. 
" As to anything that Texas or New Mexico 
may do in taking or relinquishing possession, 
that is all moonshine. New Mexico is the 
property of the United States, and she cannot 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 335 

dispose of herself or any part of herself, nor can 
Texas take her or any part of her." He showed 
a thorough acquaintance with New Mexican 
geography and history, and alluded to the bills 
he had already brought in, in 1844 and 1850, 
to establish a divisional line between the terri- 
tory and Texas, on the longitude first of one 
hundred and then of one hundred and two de- 
grees. He recalled the fact that before the 
annexation of Texas, and in a bill proposing to 
settle all questions with her, he had inserted a 
provision forever prohibiting slavery in all parts 
of the annexed territory lying west of the hun- 
dredth degree of longitude. He also took the 
opportunity of formally stating his opposition 
to any form of slavery extension, remarking 
that it was no new idea with him, but dated 
from the time when in 1804, while a law stu- 
dent in Tennessee, he had studied Blackstone 
as edited by the learned Virginian, Judge 
Tucker, who, in an appendix, treated of, and 
totally condemned, black slavery in the United 
States. The very difficulty, or, as he deemed 
it, the impossibility, of getting rid of the evil, 
made Benton all the more determined in op- 
posing its extension. " The incurability of the 
evil is the greatest objection to the extension 
of slavery. If it is wrong for the legislator to 
inflict an evil which can be cured, how much 



336 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

more to inflict one that is incurable, and against 
the will of the people who are to endure it for- 
ever ! I quarrel with no one for deeming slavery 
a blessing ; I deem it an evil, and would neither 
adopt it nor impose it on others." The solution 
of the problem of disposing of existent slavery, 
he confessed, seemed beyond human wisdom; 
but " there is a wisdom above human, and to 
that we must look. In the mean time, do not 
extend the evil." In justification of his position 
he quoted previous actions of Congress, done 
under the lead of Southern men, in refusing 
again and again, down to 1807, to allow slavery 
to be introduced into Indiana, when that com- 
munity petitioned for it. He also repudiated 
strongly the whole spirit in which Clay had 
gotten up his compromise bill, stating that he 
did not believe in geographical parties ; that he 
knew no North and no South, and utterly re- 
jected any slavery compromises except those 
to be found in the Constitution. Altogether 
it was a great speech, and his opposition was 
one of the main causes of the defeat of Clay's 
measure. 

Benton's position on the Wilmot Proviso is 
worth giving in his own words: "That meas- 
ure was rejected again as heretofore, and by 
the votes of those who were opposed to extend- 
ing slavery into the territories, because it was 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 337 

unnecessary and inoperative, — irritating to the 
Slave States, without benefit to the Free States, 
a mere work of supererogation, of which the 
fruit was discontent. It was rejected, not on 
the principle of non-intervention ; not on the 
principle of leaving to the territories to do as 
they pleased on the question, but because there 
had been intervention ; because Mexican law 
and constitution had intervened, had abolished, 
slavery by law in those dominions ; which law 
would remain in force until repealed by Con- 
gress. All that the opponents to the exten- 
sion of slavery had to do, then, was to do noth- 
ing. And they did nothing." 

Before California was admitted into the 
Union old Zachary Taylor had died, leaving 
behind him a name that will always be re- 
membered among our people. He was neither 
a great statesman nor yet a great commander ; 
but he was an able and gallant soldier, a loyal 
and upright public servant, and a most kindly, 
honest, and truthful man. His death was a 
greater loss to the country than perhaps the 
people ever knew. 

The bill for the admission of California as 
a free state, heartily sustained by Benton, was 
made a test question by the Southern disunion- 
is ts ; but on this occasion they were thoroughly 
beaten. The great struggle was made over a 

22 



338 THOMAS II ART DENTON. 

proposition to limit the southern boundary oi 
the state to the line of 30° 30', and to extend 
the Missouri line through to the Pacific, so 
as to authorize the existence of slavery in all 
the territory south of that latitude. This was 
defeated by a vote of thirty-two to twenty- 
four. Not only Benton, but also Spruance and 
Wales of Delaware, and Underwood of Ken- 
tucky, joined with the representatives from 
the Free States in opposing it. Had it not 
been for the action of these four slave-state 
senators in leaving their associates, the vote 
would have been a tie ; and their courage and 
patriotism should be remembered. The bill 
was then passed by a vote of thirty-four to 
eighteen, two other Southern senators, Hous- 
ton of Texas, and Bell of Tennessee, voting 
for it, in addition to the four already men- 
tioned. After its passage, ten of the senators 
who had voted against it, including, of course, 
Jefferson Davis, and also Benton's own col- 
league from Missouri, Atchison, joined in a 
protest against what had been done, ending 
with a thinly veiled threat of disunion, — "dis- 
solution of the confederacy," as they styled it. 
Benton stoutly and successfully opposed allow- 
ing this protest to be received or entered upon 
the journal, condemning it, with a frankness 
that very few of his fellow-senators would have 



SLAVERY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES. 339 

dared to copy, as being sectional and disunion 
in form, and therefore unfit even for preserva- 
tion on the records. 

When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was 
passed, through the help of some Northern 
votes, Benton refused to support it; and this 
was the last act of importance that he performed 
as United States Senator. He- had risen and 
grown steadily all through his long term of ser- 
vice ; and during its last period he did greater 
service to the nation than any of his fellow- 
senators. Compare his stand against the slav- 
ery extremists and disunionists, such as Cal- 
houn, with the position of Webster at the time 
of his famous seventh of March speech, or with 
that of Clay when he brought in his compro- 
mise bill ! In fact, as the times grew more 
troublesome, he grew steadily better able to do 
good work in them. 

It is this fact of growth that especially marks 
his career. No other American statesman, ex- 
cept John Quincy Adams, — certainly neither 
of his great contemporaries, Webster and Clay, 
. — kept doing continually better work through- 
out his term of public service, or showed him- 
self able to rise to a higher level at the very 
end than at the beginning. Yet such was the 
case with Benton. He always rose to meet a 
really great emergency ; and his services to the 



340 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

nation grew steadily in importance to the very 
close of bis life. Whereas Webster and Clay 
passed their zenith and fell, he kept rising all 
the time. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE LOSING FIGHT. 

Benton had now finished his fifth and last 
term in the United States Senate. He had 
been chosen senator from Missouri before she 
was admitted into the Union, and had remained 
such for thirty years. During all that time the 
state had been steadily Democratic, the large 
Whig minority never being able to get control ; 
but on the question of the extension of slavery 
the dominant party itself began at this time to 
break into two factions. Hitherto Benton had 
been the undisputed leader of the Democracy, 
but now the pro-slavery and disunionist Demo- 
crats organized a very powerful opposition to 
him ; while he still received the enthusiastic 
support of an almost equally numerous body of 
followers. Although the extension of slavery 
and the preservation of the Union were the two 
chief and vital points on which the factions dif- 
fered, yet the names by which they designated 
each other were adopted in consequence of 
their differing also on a third and only less im- 



342 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

portant one. Benton was such a firm believer 
in hard money, and a currency of gold and 
silver, as to have received the nickname of 
" Old Bullion," and his followers were called 
" hards ; " his opponents were soft money men, 
in addition to being secessionists and pro-slav- 
ery fanatics, and took the name of " softs." The 
principles of the Bentonians were right, and 
those of their opponents wrong ; but for all 
that the latter gradually gained upon the for- 
mer. Finally, in the midst of Benton's fight 
against the extension of slavery into the terri- 
tories, the "softs" carried the Missouri legis- 
lature, and passed a series of resolutions based 
upon those of Calhoun. These were most trucu- 
lent and disloyal in tone, demanding that slav- 
ery be permitted to exist in all the new states 
to be admitted, and instructing their senators to 
vote accordingly. These resolutions were pre- 
sented in the senate by Benton's colleague from 
Missouri, Atchison, who was rather hostile to 
him and to every other friend of the Union, 
and later on achieved disreputable notoriety as 
a leader of the " border ruffians " in the affrays 
on the soil of Kansas. Benton at once picked 
up the glove that had been flung down. He 
utterly refused to obey the resolutions, de- 
nounced them savagely as being treasonable 
and offensive in the highest degree, asserted that 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 343 

they did not express the true opinions of the 
voters of the state, and appealed from the 
Missouri legislature to the Missouri people. 

The issue between the two sides was now 
sharply brought out, and, as this took place 
towards the end of Benton's fifth term, the 
struggle to command the legislature which 
should reelect him or give him a successor 
was most exciting. Benton himself took an 
active part in the preliminary canvass. Nei- 
ther faction was able to get a majority of the 
members, and the deadlock was finally broken 
by the " softs " coming to the support of the 
Whigs, and helping them to elect Benton's 
rival. Thus, after serving his state faithfully 
and ably for thirty years, he was finally turned 
out of the position which he so worthily filled, 
because he had committed the crime of stand- 
ing loyally by the Union. 

But the stout old Nationalist was not in the 
least cast down or even shaken by his defeat. 
He kept up the fight as bitterly as ever, though 
now an old man, and in 1852 went to Con- 
gress as a representative Union Democrat. 
For thirty years he had been the autocrat of 
Missouri politics, and had at one time wielded 
throughout his own state a power as great as 
Calhoun possessed in South Carolina; greater 
than Webster held in Massachusetts, or Clay 



344 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

in Kentucky. But the tide which had so long 
flowed in his favor now turned, and for the 
few remaining years of his life set as steadily 
against him ; yet at no time of his long pub- 
lic career did he stand forth as honorably and 
prominently as during his last days, when he 
was showing so stern a front to his victorious 
foes. His love for work was so great that, 
when out of the Senate, he did not find even 
his incessant political occupations enough for 
him. During his contest for the senatorship 
his hands had been full, for he had spoken 
again and again throughout the entire state, 
his carefully prepared speeches showing re- 
markable power, and filled with scathing de- 
nunciation and invective, and biting and caustic 
sarcasm. But so soon as his defeat was assured 
he turned his attention immediately to liter- 
ature, setting to work on his great " Thirty 
Years' View," of which the first volume was 
printed during his congressional term, and was 
quoted on the floor of the House, both by his 
friends and foes, during the debates in which 
he was taking part. 

In 1852, when he was elected to Congress 
as a member of the House, he had supported 
Pierce for the presidency against Scott, a good 
general, but otherwise a wholly absurd and 
flatulent personage, who was the Whig nom- 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 345 

inee. But it soon became evident that Pierce 
was completely under the control of the se- 
cession wing of the party, and Benton there- 
afterwards treated him with contemptuous hos- 
tility, despising him, and seeing him exactly 
as he was, — a small politician, of low capacity 
and mean surroundings, proud to act as the 
servile tool of men worse than himself but 
also stronger and abler. He was ever ready 
to do any work the slavery leaders set him, 
and to act as their attorney in arguing in its 
favor, — to quote Benton's phrase, with "un- 
daunted mendacity, moral callosity [and] men- 
tal obliquity." His last message to Congress in 
the slavery interest Benton spoke of as char- 
acteristic, and exemplifying "all the modes of 
conveying untruths which long ages have in- 
vented, — direct assertion, fallacious inference, 
equivocal phrase, and false innuendo." As he 
entertained such views of the head of the Dem- 
ocratic party, and as this same head was in 
hearty accord with, and a good representative 
of the mass of the rank and file politicians of 
the organization, it is small wonder that Ben- 
ton found himself, on every important ques- 
tion that came up while he was in Congress, 
opposed to the mass of his fellow-Democrats. 
Although the great questions to which he 
devoted himself, while a representative in Con- 



346 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

gress, were those relating to the extension of 
slavery, yet he also found time to give to 
certain other subjects, working as usual with 
indomitable energy, and retaining his marvel- 
ous memory to the last. The idea of despond- 
ing or giving up, for any cause whatever, sim- 
ply never entered his head. When his house, 
containing all the manuscript and papers of the 
nearly completed second volume of his " Thirty 
Years' View," was burned up, he did not de- 
lay a minute in recommencing his work, and 
the very next day spoke in Congress as usual. 

His speeches were showing a steady improve- 
ment ; they were not masterpieces, even at the 
last, but in every way, especially in style, they 
were infinitely superior to those that he had made 
on his first entrance into public life. Of course, a 
man with his intense pride in his country, and 
characterized by such a desire to see her become 
greater and more united in every way, would 
naturally support the proposal to build a Pacific 
Railroad, and accordingly he argued for it at great 
length and with force and justness, at the same 
time opposing the propositions to build northern 
and southern trans-continental roads as substi- 
tutes for the proposed central route. He showed 
the character of the land through which the 
road would run, and the easiness of the passes 
across the Rockies, and prophesied a rapid in- 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 347 

crease of states as one of the results attendant 
upon its building, At the end of his speech he 
made an elaborate comparison of the courses of 
trade and commerce at different periods of the 
world's history, and showed that, as we had 
reached the Pacific coast, we had finally taken 
a position where our trade with the Oriental 
kingdoms, backed up by our own enormous in- 
ternal development, rendered us more than ever 
independent of Europe. 

In another speech he discussed very intelli- 
gently, and with his usual complete command of 
the facts of the case, some of the contemporary 
Indian uprisings in the far West. He attacked 
our whole Indian policy, showing that the cor- 
ruption of the Indian agents, coupled with as- 
tute aggressions, were the usual causes of our 
wars. Further, he criticised our regular troops 
as being unfit to cope with the savages, and ad- 
vocated the formation of companies of frontier 
rangers, who should also be settlers, and should 
receive from the government a bounty in land 
as part reward for their service. Many of his 
remarks on our Indian policy apply quite as 
well now as they did then, and our regular sol- 
diers are certainly not the proper opponents for 
the Indians ; but Benton's military views were, 
as a rule, the reverse of sensible, and we cannot 
accept his denunciations of the army, and espe- 



348 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

cially of West Point, as being worth serious con- 
sideration. His belief in the marvelous efficacy 
of a raw militia, especially as regards war with 
European powers, was childish, and much of his 
feeling against the regular army officer was dic- 
tated by jealousy. He was, by all the peculiar- 
ities of his habits and education, utterly unfitted 
for military command ; and it would have been 
an evil day for his good fame if Polk had suc- 
ceeded in having him made lieutenant-general of 
our forces in Mexico. 

His remarks upon our Indian policy were not 
the only ones he made that would bear study 
even yet. Certain of his speeches upon the dif- 
ferent land-bounty and pension bills, passed 
nominally in the interests of veterans, but really 
through demagogy and the machination of spec- 
ulators, could be read with profit by not a few 
Congressmen at the present time. One of his 
utterances was : " I am a friend to old soldiers 
. . . but not to old speculators ; " and while fa- 
voring proper pension bills he showed the fool- 
ishness and criminality of certain others very 
clearly, together with the fact that, when passed 
long after the services have been rendered, they 
always fail to relieve the real sufferers, and 
work in the interests of unworthy outsiders. 

But his great speech, and one of the best and 
greatest that he ever made, was the one in 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 349 

opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, which 
was being pushed through Congress by the fire- 
eaters and their Northern pro-slavery followers. 
His own position upon the measure was best 
expressed by the words he used in commenting 
on the remarks of a Georgian member: " He 
votes as a Southern man, and votes sectionally ; 
I also am a Southern man, but vote nationally 
on national questions." 

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had ex- 
pressly abolished slavery in the territory out of 
which Kansas and Nebraska were carved. By 
the proposed bill this compromise was to be 
repealed, and the famous doctrine of non-inter- 
vention, or " squatter sovereignty," was to take 
its place, the people of each territory being 
allowed to choose for themselves whether they 
did or did not wish slavery. Benton attacked 
the proposal with all the strength of his frank, 
open nature as " a bungling attempt to smug- 
gle slavery into the territory, and throughout 
all the country, up to the Canada line and out 
to the Rocky Mountains." He showed exhaust- 
ively the real nature of the original Missouri 
Compromise, which, as he said, was forced by 
the South upon the North, and which the South 
now proposed to repeal, that it might humiliate 
the North still further. The compromise of 
1820 was, he justly contended, right ; it was 



350 THOMAS DART BENTON. 

like the original compromises of the Constitu- 
tion, by which the Slave States were admitted 
to the formation of the Union ; no greater con- 
cession of principle was involved in the one case 
than in' the other ; and, had either compromise 
failed, the Union would not now be in existence. 
But the day when compromises had been neces- 
sary, or even harmless, had passed. The time 
had come when the extension of slavery was to 
be opposed in every constitutional way ; and it 
was an outrage to propose to extend its domain 
by repealing all that part of a compromise 
measure which worked against it, when the 
South had already long taken advantage of such 
parts of the law as worked in its favor. Said 
Benton : " The South divided and took half, 
and now it will not do to claim the other half." 
Exactly as a proposition to destroy the slavery 
compromises of the Constitution would be an 
open attempt to destroy the Union, so, he said, 
the attempt to abrogate the compromise of 1820 
would be a preparation for the same ending. 
" I have stood upon the Missouri Compromise 
for about thirty years, and mean to stand upon 
it to the end of my life. ... [it is] a binding 
covenant upon both parties, and the more so 
upon the South, as she imposed it." 

The squatter sovereignty theories of Douglas 
he treated with deserved ridicule, laughing at 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 351 

the idea that the territories were not the actual 
property of the nation, to be treated as the lat- 
ter wished, and having none of the rights of 
sovereign states ; and he condemned even more 
severely the theory advanced to the effect that 
Congress had no power to legislate on slavery 
in the territories. Thus, he pointed out that 
to admit any such theories was directly to re- 
verse the principles upon which we had acted 
for seventy years in regard to the various terri- 
tories that from time to time grew to such size 
as entitled them to come into the Union as 
states. After showing that there was no excuse 
for bringing in the bill on the plea of settling 
the slavery question, since there was not a foot 
of territory in the United States where the sub- 
ject of slavery was not already settled by law, 
he closed with an earnest appeal against such an 
attempt to break up the Union and outrage the 
North by forcing slavery into a land where its 
existence was already forbidden by law. His 
speech exceeded the hour allotted to it, and 
he was allowed to go on only by the courtesy 
of a member from Illinois, who, when some of 
the Southerners protested against his being 
heard farther, gave up part of his own time to 
the grand old Missourian, and asked the House 
to hear him, if only " as the oldest living man 
in Congress, the only man in Congress who was 



352 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

present at the passage of the Missouri Compro- 
mise bill." Many a man at the North, ashamed 
and indignant at seeing the politicians of his 
own section cower at the crack of the Southern 
whip, felt a glow of sincere gratitude and ad- 
miration for the rugged Westerner, who so 
boldly bade defiance to the ruling slave party 
that held the reins not only in his own section, 
but also in his own state, and to oppose which 
was almost certain political death. 

The Gadsden treaty was also strongly opposed 
and condemned by Benton, who considered it to 
be part of a great scheme or movement in the 
interests of the slavery disunionists, of which 
he also believed the Kansas-Nebraska bill to be 
the first development, — the "thin end of the 
wedge." He opposed the acquirement even of 
the small piece of territory we were actually 
able to purchase from Mexico ; and showed good 
grounds for his belief that the administration, 
acting as usual only in the interest of the seces- 
sionists, had tried to get enough North-Mexican 
territory to form several new states, and had 
also attempted to purchase Cuba, both efforts 
being for the purpose of enabling the South 
either to become again dominant in the Union 
or else to set up a separate confederacy of her 
own. For it must be kept in mind that Benton 
always believed that the Southern disunion 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 353 

movements were largely due to conspiracies 
among ambitious politicians, who used the shiv- 
ery question as a handle by which to influence 
the mass of the people. This view has certainly 
more truth in it than it is now the fashion to 
admit.' His objection to the actual treaty was 
mainly based on its having been done by the 
executive without the consent of the legislature, 
and he also criticised it for the secrecy with 
which it had been put through. In bringing 
forward the first objection, however, he was 
confronted with Jefferson's conduct in acquiring 
Louisiana, which he endeavored, not very suc- 
cessfully, to show had nothing in common with 
the actions of Pierce, who, he said, simply de- 
manded a check from the House with which to 
complete a purchase undertaken on his own re- 
sponsibility. 

Throughout his congressional term of service, 
Benton acted so as to deserve well of the Union 
as a whole, and most well of Missouri in partic- 
ular. But he could not stem the tide of folly 
and madness in this state, and was defeated 
when he was a candidate for reelection. The 
Whigs had now disappeared from the political 
arena, and the Know-nothings were running 
through their short and crooked lease of life ; 
they foolishly nominated a third candidate in 
Benton's district, who drew off enough votes 

23 



354 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

from him to enable his pro-slavery Democratic 
competitor to win. 

No sooner had he lost his seat in Congress 
than Benton, indefatigable as ever, set to work 
to finish his " Thirty Years' View," and pro- 
duced the second volume in 1856, the year when 
he made his last attempt to regain his hold in 
politics, and to win Missouri back to the old 
Union standard. Although his own son-in-law, 
Fremont, the daring western explorer, was run- 
ning as the first presidential candidate ever 
nominated by the Republicans, the old partisan 
voted for the Democrat, Buchanan. He did 
not like Buchanan, considering him weak and 
unsuitable, but the Republican party he be- 
lieved to be entirely too sectional in character 
for him to give it his support. For governor 
there was a triangular fight, the Know-noth- 
ings having nominated one candidate, the seces- 
sionist Democrats a second, while Benton him- 
self ran as the choice of the Union Democracy. 
He was now seventy - four years old, but his 
mind was as vigorous as ever, and his iron will 
kept up a frame that had hardly even yet be- 
gun to give way. During the course of the 
campaign he traveled throughout the state, 
going in all twelve hundred miles, and mak- 
ing forty speeches, each one of two or three 
hours' length. This was a remarkable feat for 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 355 

so old a man ; indeed, it has very rarely been 
paralleled, except by Gladstone's recent per- 
formances. The vote was quite evenly divided 
between the three candidates; but Benton came 
in third, and the extreme pro - slavery men 
carried the day. After this, during the few 
months of life he yet had left, he did not again 
mingle in the politics of Missouri. 

But in the days of his defeat at home, the 
regard and respect in which he was held in the 
other states, especially at the North, increased 
steadily ; and in the fall of 1856 he made by 
request a lecturing tour in New England, speak- 
ing on the danger of the political situation and 
the imperative necessity of preserving the 
Union, which he now clearly saw' to be gravely 
threatened. He was well received, for the 
North was learning to respect him, and he had 
gotten over his early hostility to New England, 
— a hostility originally shared by the whole 
West. The New Englanders were not yet 
aware, however, of the importance of the seces- 
sion movements, and paid little heed to the 
warnings that were to be so fully justified by 
the events of the next few years. But Benton, 
in spite of his great age, saw distinctly the 
changes that were taking place, and the dan- 
gers that were impending, — an unusual thing 
for a man whose active life has already been 
lived out under widely different-, conditions. 



356 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

He again turned his attention to literature, 
and produced another great work, the " Abridg- 
ment of the Debates of Congress from 1787 to 
1856," in sixteen volumes, besides writing a 
valuable pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, 
which he severely criticised. The amount of 
labor all this required was immense, and bis 
health completely gave way ; yet he continued 
working to the very end, dictating the closing 
portion of the " Abridgment " in a whisper as 
he lay on his death-bed. When he once began 
to fail his advanced years made him succumb 
rapidly; and on April 10, 1858, be died, in 
the city of Washington. As soon as the news 
reached Missouri, a great revulsion of feeling 
took place, and all classes of the people united 
to do honor to the memory of the dead states- 
man, realizing that i\wy had lost a man who 
towered head and shoulders above both friends 
and foes. The body was taken to St. Louis, 
and after lying in state was buried in Belle- 
fontaine Cemetery, more than forty thousand 
people witnessing the funeral. All the public 
buildings were draped in mourning ; all places 
of business were closed, and the flags every- 
where were at half - mast. Thus at the very 
end the great city of the West at last again 
paid fit homage to the West's mightiest son. 

Benton's most important writings are those 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 357 

mentioned above. The "Thirty Years' View " 
("a history of the working of the American 
government for thirty years, from 1820 to 
1850 ") will always be indispensable to every 
student of American history. It deals with the 
deeds of both houses of Congress, and of some 
of the higher federal officials during his thirty 
years' term of service in the Senate, and is val- 
uable alike for the original data it contains, and 
because it is so complete a record of our public 
life at that time. The book is also remarkable 
for its courteous and equable tone, even towards 
bitter personal and political enemies. It shows 
a vanity on the part of the author that is too 
frank and free from malice to be anything but 
amusing ; the style is rather ponderous, and the 
English not always good, for Benton began life, 
and, in fact, largely passed it, in an age of or- 
nate periods, when grandiloquence was consid- 
ered more essential than grammar. In much 
of the Mississippi valley the people had their 
own canons of literary taste ; indeed, in a re- 
cent book by one of Benton's admirers, there is 
a fond allusion to his statement, anent the ex- 
punging resolution, that " solitary and alone " 
he had set the ball in motion, — the pleonasm 
being evidently looked upon in the light of a 
rather fine oratorical outburst. 

" The Abridgment of the Debates of Con- 



358 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

gress from 1789 to 1856 " he was only able to 
bring down to 1850. Sixteen volumes were 
published. It was a compilation needing infi- 
nite labor, and is invaluable to the historian. 
While in the midst of the vast work he also 
found time to write his " Examination of the 
Dred Scott case," in so far as it decided the 
Missouri Compromise law to be unconstitu- 
tional, and asserted the self -extension of the 
Constitution into the territories, carrying slav- 
ery with it, — the decision in this case pro- 
mulgated by Judge Taney, of unhappy fame, 
having been the last step taken in the interests 
of slavery and for the overthrow of freedom. 
The pamphlet contained nearly two hundred 
pages, and showed, as was invariably the case 
with anything Benton did, the effects of labo- 
rious research and wide historical and legal 
learning. His summing up was, " that the de- 
cision conflicts with the uniform action of all 
the departments of the federal government from 
its foundation to the present time, and cannot 
be accepted as a rule to govern Congress and 
the people, without severing that act and ad- 
mitting the political supremacy of the court 
and accepting an altered constitution from its 
hands, and taking a new and portentous point 
of departure in the working of the govern- 
ment." He denounced the new party theories 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 359 

of the Democracy, which had abandoned the 
old belief of the founders of the Republic, that 
Congress had power to legislate upon slavery in 
territories, and which had gone on " from the 
abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, which 
saved the Union, to squatter sovereignty, which 
killed the compromise, and thence to the de- 
cisions of the supreme court, which kill both." 
In closing he touched briefly on the history 
of the pro - slavery agitation. " Up to Mr. 
Pierce's administration the plan had been de- 
fensive, that is to say, to make the secession 
of the South a measure of self-defense against 
the abolition encroachments and crusades of 
the North. In the time of Mr. Pierce the plan 
became offensive, that is to say, to commence 
the expansion of slavery, and the acquisition of 
territory to spread it over, so as to overpower 
the North with new Slave States, and drive 
them out of the Union. . . . The rising in 
the Free States, in consequence of the abroga- 
tion of the Missouri Compromise, checked these 
schemes, and limited the success of the dis- 
unionists to the revival of the agitation which 
enables them to wield the South against the 
North in all the federal elections and all fed- 
eral legislation. Accidents and events have 
given the party a strange preeminence, — under 
Jackson's administration proclaimed for trea- 



360 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

son ; since at the head of the government and 
of the Democratic party. The death of Harri- 
son, and the accession of Tyler, was their first 
great lift ; the election of Mr. Pierce was their 
culminating point." This was the last protest 
of the last of the old Jacksonian leaders against 
that new generation of Democrats, whose de- 
light it had become to bow down to strange 
gods. 

In his private life Benton's relations were of 
the pleasantest. He was a religious man, al- 
though, like his great political chief, he could 
on occasions swear roundly. He was rigidly 
moral, and he was too fond of work ever to 
make social life a business. But he liked small 
dinners, with just a few intimate friends or 
noted and brilliant public men, and always 
shone at such an entertainment. Although he 
had not traveled much, he gave the impression 
of having done so, by reason of his wide read- 
ing, and because he always made a point of 
knowing all explorers, especially those who had 
penetrated our great western wilds. His geo- 
graphical knowledge was wonderful ; and his 
good nature, as well as his delight in work 
for work's sake, made him of more use than 
any library of reference, if his friends needed 
information upon some abstruse matter, — Web- 
ster himself acknowledging his indebtedness to 



THE LOSING FIGHT. 361 

him on one occasion, and being the authority 
for the statement that Benton knew more polit- 
ical facts than any other man he had ever met, 
even than John Quincy Adams, and possessed 
a wonderful fund of general knowledge. Al- 
though very gentle in his dealings with those 
for whom he cared, Benton originally was rather 
quarrelsome and revengeful in character. His 
personal and political prejudices were bitter, 
and he denounced his enemies freely in public 
and from the stump; yet he always declined 
to take part in joint political debates, «on ac- 
count of the personal discourtesy with which 
they were usually conducted. He gave his 
whole time to public life, rarely or never at- 
tending to his law practice after he had fairly 
entered the political field. 

Benton was one of those who were present 
and escaped death at the time of the terri- 
ble accident on board the Princeton, during 
Tyler's administration, when the bursting of 
her great gun killed so many prominent men. 
Benton was saved owing to the fact that, char- 
acteristically enough, he had stepped to one 
side the better to note the marksmanship of 
the gunner. Ex-Governor Gilmer, of Virginia, 
who had taken his place, was instantly killed. 
Tyler, who was also on board, was likewise 
saved in consequence of the exhibition of a 



362 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

characteristic trait ; for, just as the gun was 
about to be fired, something occurred in an- 
other part of the ship which distracted the 
attention of the fussy, fidgety president, who 
accordingly ran off to see what it was, and 
thus escaped the fatal explosion. The tragic 
nature of the accident and his own narrow es- 
cape made a deep impression upon Benton; and 
it was noticed that ever afterwards he was far 
more forbearing and forgiving than of old. He 
became good friends with Webster and other 
political opponents, with whom he had for- 
merly hardly been on speaking terms. Cal- 
houn alone he would never forgive. It was not 
in his nature to do anything by halves ; and 
accordingly, when he once forgave an oppo- 
nent, he could not do enough to show him that 
the forgiveness was real. A Missourian named 
Wilson, who had been his bitter and malignant 
political foe for years, finally becoming broken 
in fortune and desirous of bettering himself by 
going to California, where Benton's influence, 
through his son-in-law, Fremont, was supreme, 
was persuaded by Webster to throw himself 
on the generosity of his old enemy. The lat- 
ter not only met him half-way, but helped 
him with a lavish kindness that would hardly 
have been warranted by less than a life-long 
friendship. Webster has left on record the 



TEE LOSING FIGHT. 363 

fact that, when once they had come to be on 
good terms with each other, there was no man 
in the whole Senate of whom he would more 
freely have asked any favor that could prop- 
erly be granted. 

He was a most loving father. At his death 
he left four surviving daughters, — Mrs. Wil- 
liam Carey Jones, Mrs. Sarah Benton Jacobs, 
Madame Susan Benton Boilleau, and Mrs. Jes- 
sie Ann Benton Fremont, the wife of the great 
explorer, whose wonderful feats and adven- 
tures, ending with the conquest of California, 
where he became a sort of viceroy in point of 
power, made him an especial favorite with his 
father-in-law, who loved daring and hardihood. 
Benton took the keenest delight in Fremont's 
remarkable successes, and was never tired of 
talking of them, both within and without the 
Senate. He records with very natural pride the 
fact that it was only the courage and judgment 
displayed in a trying crisis by his own gifted 
daughter, Fremont's wife, which enabled the 
adventurous young explorer to prosecute one 
of the most important of his expeditions, when 
threatened with fatal interference from jealous 
governmental superiors. 

He was an exceptionally devoted husband. 
His wife was Miss Elizabeth McDowell, of Vir- 
ginia, whom he married after he had entered 



364 THOMAS HART BENTON. 

the Senate. Their life was most happy until 
1844, when she was struck by paralysis. From 
that time till her death in 1854, he never went 
out to a public place of amusement, spending 
all his time not occupied with public duties in 
writing by her bedside. It is scant praise to 
say that, while mere acquiescence on his part 
would have enabled him to become rich through 
government influence, he nevertheless died a 
poor man. In public, as in private life, he was 
a man of sensitive purity of character; he would 
never permit any person connected with him 
by blood or marriage to accept office under the 
government, nor would he ever favor any ap- 
plicant for a government contract on political 
grounds. 

During his last years, when his sturdy inde- 
pendence and devotion to the Union had caused 
him the loss of his political influence in hjs 
own state and with his own party, he never- 
theless stood higher with the country at 
than ever before. He was a faithful 
and a bitter foe; he was vain, ; , utterly 

fearless, and quite unable to cou ehend uch 
emotions as are expressed by the fecjms de- 
spondency and yielding. Without bein \ a great 
orator or writer, or even an original thinker, he 
yet possessed marked ability ; and his abound- 
ing vitality and marvelous memory, his indom- 



THE LOSING FIGHT. obo 

itable energy and industry, and his tenacious 
persistency and personal courage, all combined 
to give him a position and influence such as 
few American statesmen have ever held. His 
character grew steadily to the very last ; he 
made better speeches and was better able to 
face new problems when past three score and 
ten than in his early youth or middle age. He 
possessed a rich fund of political, legal, and his. 
torical learning, and every subject that he ever 
handled showed the traces of careful and thor- 
ough study. He was very courteous, except 
when provoked ; his courage was proof against 
all fear, and he shrank from no contest, per- 
sonal or political. He was sometimes narrow- 
minded, and always wilful and passionate ; but 
he was honest and truthful. At all times and 
in all places he held every good gift he had 
pletely at the service of the American Fed- 



INDEX. 



Adams, John Quinct: in presiden- 
tial election of 1824-5, 59-61; 
makes Clay secretary of state, 61 ; 
and is assailed therefor, 62 ; out- 
lines Whig policy in his inaugural, 
63; on the Panama mission, 64; 
in election of 1828, 69 ; preserves 
purity of civil service, 81 ; on rec- 
ognition of Texas, 180. 
" Albany Regency," the, adopts 

" spoils system," Si- 
Arnold, Benedict: compared with 

Burr and J. Davis, 163. 
Atchison, protests against admission 
of California, 338. 

Benton, town of, founded, 25. 

Benton, Thomas Hart : — local char- 
acter of his statesmanship, 13; 
birth, 23 ; boyhood and education, 
24 et seq. ; religious training, 26 ; 
fights a duel, 27 ; affray with 
Jackson, 28 ; admitted to the 
bar, 29 ; in legislature of Tennes- 
see, 29 ; on the Hartford Conven- 
tion, 31 ; a slaveholder, 31 ; fa- 
vors war of 1812, 32 , in service, 32 ; 
befriends Jackson, 32 ; associa- 
tions in Tennessee, 33 et seq. ; some 
traits of character, 34 ; settles in 
Missouri, 35; surroundings and 
influences there, 40 ; speech on 
treaty with Spain concerning Flor- 
ida, 41 ; first position concerning 
slavery, 43 ; enters U. S. Senate, 
44 ; honorable financial sacrifice, 
45 ; position on the Oregon ques- 
tion, 50-53, 65, 263-270, 273-279, 
281-289; bill to establish a trading i 
road through Missouri, 53 ; on the 
removal of the Indians, 55 ; votes 
for Clay's protective tariff bill, 
58 ; opposes internal improve- 



ments and Cumberland Road bill, 
58 ; condemns election of John Q. 
Adams to Presidency, 60 ; sup- 
ports Clay, then Jackson, 61 ; will 
not join outcry against Adams and 
Clay, 61 ; a leader of the opposi- 
tion to Adams in the Senate, 63 ; 
represents ultra-Southern feeling 
concerning revolted Spanish col- 
onies, 65 ; vote on the protective 
tariff of 1828, 66, 91, 102 ; efforts 
concerning disposal of public land, 
68, 77, 149, 154, 217 ; hostility to 
the Northeastern States, 76 ; in 
the Webster-Hayne debate, 78 ; 
opposes Jackson's " spoils sys- 
tem," 79-85 ; leader of the Jack- 
sonians in the Senate, 85, 86 ; 
shows that protective tariff has 
not helped the West, 91 ; urges 
repeal of the tax on salt, 92, 227 ; 
vigorously sustains Jackson in the 
nullification troubles, 100 - 105 ; 
sustains the Force bill, 105 ; op- 
poses Clay's compromise measure, 
107-109 ; remarks on his posi- 
tion at this period, 112 ; campaign 
against the Bank of the United 
States, 114, 130, 136, 143 ; speech 
on the currency, 122, 136-138, 253 ; 
conflict with Clay, 129 ; on the re- 
moval of the deposits, 131 ; op- 
poses the resolution of censure 
against Jackson, 133 ; and pushes 
through his own expunging reso- 
lution, 134-136, 139-142; advo- 
cates establishment of mints at 
the South, 144; opposes distribu- 
tion of surplus, 145, 149 ; wishes 
it used for fortifications, 146, 150- 
153 ; advocates insisting on our 
claims against France, 147 ; but 
opposes paying claims of Ameri- 



368 



INDEX. 



can citizens, 148 ; opposes the so- i 
called specie circulars, 154 ; views 
concerning Southern slavery poli- 
ticians, 102 ; opposed to the Aboli- 
tionists, 105 ; criticises Calhoun, 
107, 108 ; aids to defeat bill pro- 
hibiting circulation of abolition 
documents through U. S. mails, 
169 ; carries bill extending bound- 
aries of Missouri, 170 ; urges ad- 
mission of Michigan, 171 ; carries 
through treaty with Cherokees, 
171 ; defends governmental treat- 
ment of Indians, 172 ; condemns 
treaty establishing Southwestern 
boundary, 175; position concern- 
ing annexation of Texas, 180-183 ; 
hostility to separatist docti'ines, 
188 ; blames bankers and politi- 
cians for financial crisis of 1837, 
190, 194 ; his forebodings of this 
trouble, 191-193 ; demeanor in the 
crisis, 197 ; supports issue of 
Treasury notes, 198 ; opposes pay- 
ment of further installment of 
surplus, 199 ; supports scheme for 
independent Treasury, 200, 207 ; 
action concerning resumption by 
bonds, 203 ; a supporter of the ad- 
ministration in these times, 263 ; 
his knowledge, 204 ; hostile to 
paper currency, 206 ; defends ad- 
ministration in matters of Semi- 
nole war, 212 ; theory for conduct- 
ing this war, 215 ; advocates 
homestead law, 217 ; opposes as- 
sumption of State debts by na- 
tional government, 220; explains 
greater rapidity of progress at 
North than at South, 222 ; on the 
tariff of 1833, 224-230; defends 
Jackson and Van Buren against 
charges of squandering public 
moneys, 230; in the Harrison 
campaign, 233 ; holds the Demo- 
crats for the Union, 234 ; feeling 
concerning slavery about Van 
Buren's time, 235 ; leads the Demo- 
crats in struggle between Presi- 
dent Tyler and Clay, 240-244 ; ex- 
alts the " Democratic idea," 241 ; 
comments on Tyler's first message 
to Congress, 245 ; opposes sub- 
Treasury bill, 246 ; also the bank, 
distribution and bankruptcy bills, 
246-249 ; opposes the hour limit 
for speeches in the Senate, 250- 
252 ; speech concerning the dis- 
trict banks and the currency, 253 ; 



opposes effort to establish a na- 
tional bank during Tyler's admin- 
istration, 255-258 ; opposes new 
form of Treasury notes, 258 ; op- 
poses subsidizing steamship lines, 
258 ; also the abuse of the pen- 
sion system, 258 ; always an advo- 
cate of extending the national 
boundaries, 263, 267 ; opposes the 
Ashburton treaty, 269, 273-279; 
remarks concerning the Caroline 
imbroglio, 270 ; opposes making 
an efficient navy, 272 ; references 
to slavery in speeches on the Ash- 
burton treaty, 274, 280 ; on the 
Oregon question, 281-289 ; posi- 
tion concerning annexation of 
Texas in time of Polk, 299-317 ; 
opposes the South, 301 ; opposes 
Calhoun's treaty, 306-310 ; hood- 
winked by the annexationists, 313 ; 
attacks Calhoun and opposes the 
Mexican war, 315 ; offered the 
command of the army, 318 ; 
awakes to importance of slavery 
question, 318 ; his later position 
concerning it, 320, 333-336 ; con- 
tests with pro-slavery Senators, 
322, 323 ; opposes Calhoun as to 
power of Congress over slavery 
in territories, 323-327 ; and as to 
admission of Oregon, 328; criti- 
cises Polk's administration, 328 ; 
visits New York in presidential 
campaign in 1848, 329 ; de- 
fends Taylor's message, 331 ; 
opposes Clay's compromise, 332, 
333-336 ; more antagonism to- 
wards Calhoun, 333 ; position on 
the Wilmot Proviso, 336 ; advo- 
cates admission of California as a 
Free State, 337 ; refuses to sup- 
port Fugitive Slave Act, 339; 
nickname of " Old Bullion," 342 ; 
opposition to him in Missouri, 
342 ; defeated, 343 ; goes to House 
of Representatives, 343 ; begins 
work on the " Thirty Years' 
View," 344; supports Pierce for 
Presidency, 344 ; but later goes 
into opposition, 345; supports 
scheme for Pacific Railroad, 346 ; 
discusses the Indian policy, 347 ; 
speeches on land-bounty and pen- 
sion bills, 348; opposes Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, 349-352 ; discusses 
historically the Missouri Com- 
promise, 349 ; ridicules squatter 
sovereignty, 350; opposes the 



INDEX. 



369 



Gladstone treaty, 352; view of 
Southern disunion scheme, 352 ; 
again defeated in Missouri elec- 
tions, 353 ; returns to labor on 
" Thirty Years' View," 354 ; votes 
for Buchanan, 354 ; candidate for 
governorship, 354 ; stumps the 
State, 354 ; respected at the North, 
355 ; prepares his " Abridgment 
of the Debates of Congress," 356 ; 
death, 356 ; value of his works 357 ; 
criticism of the Dred Scott case, 
358 ; and of the new Democratic 
theories, 358 ; domestic relations, 
360 ; extensive knowledge, 3G0 ; 
on board the Princeton at time of 
explosion of great gun, 361 ; gen- 
erous temper, 362. 

Biddle, Nicholas : president of Bank 
of United States, 116: his er- 
rors, 124 ; his bank goes to pieces, 
208. 

Birney, James G. : abolitionist can- 
didate for Presidency, 291, 292 ; 
folly of nominating him, 293, 294, 
310. 

Blair, Francis C, displaced, 317. 

Buchanan, James : on annexation of 
Texas, 310 : Benton votes for him, 
354. 

Burr, Aaron : introduces " spoils 
system" in New York, 81 ; com- 
pared with Benedict Arnold, 
163. 

Calhoun, John C. : rupture with 
Jackson, resignation from Vice- 
Presidency, 86 ; position concern- 
ing tariff in 1S16, 89 ; position as 
a nullifier, 96 ; introduces nullifi- 
cation resolutions, 103; threat- 
ened with hanging, 104 ; arranges 
compromise with Clay, 106 ; sub- 
sequent quarrel with Clay con- 
cerning this, 110 ; his purposes at 
this time, 111 ; assails Jackson, 
132; opposes Webster's bill for 
rechartering bank, 133; on the 
expunging resolution, 141 ; pro- 
poses constitutional amendment 
for distribution of Treasury sur- 
plus, 144 ; opposes appropriating 
Treasury surplus for fortifications, 
146 ; attack on President Pierce, 
166 ; his honesty, 168 ; on ad- 
mission of Texas 180 ; in connec- 
tion with trouble with Mexico, 
260 ; on the Oregon question, 
285 ; instrumental in election of 

24 



Polk, 292; letter to Lord Aber- 
deen, 300 ; assailed by Benton as 
to annexation of Texas, 307, 309 ; 
action as to legislation about 
Texas, 313 ; relations as to Mex- 
ican war, 314 ; and the "Wilmot 
Proviso, 323 ; resolution as to 
power of Congress over slavery 
in the territories, 323-326; not 
a " Union man," 326 ; on the ad- 
mission of Oregon, 326, 327, 328 ; 
dislikes Taylor's message to Con- 
gress, 331. 

California, admission of, 337. 

Caroline, affair of the, 270. 

Cartwright, Peter, 33. 

Cass, Lewis: nominated for Presi- 
dency, 329. 

Cherokees, treaty for their removal, 
171. 

Clay, Henry : introduces his first 
tariff bill, 58; secretary of state 
under Adams, 61 ; assailed there- 
for, and fights Randolph, 62 ; de- 
vises the Panama mission, 63 ; 
leader of National Republican 
or Whig party, 86 ; defies " the 
South, the President, and the 
devil," 90 ; erroneous statement 
as to effect of tariff in the West, 
91 ; angers the nullifiers, 99 ; de- 
feated in presidential election in 
1832, 100 ; alarmed at position of 
Calhoun, 106 ; and prepares com- 
promise, 106 ; afterward quarrels 
about it with Calhoun, 110 ; be- 
friends Bank of the United States, 
124, 127, 129 ; effect on his po- 
litical fortunes, 125 ; introduces 
resolution for return of depos- 
its, 131 ; also for censuring Pres- 
ident Jackson, 132 ; opposes Web- 
ster's bill for rechartering Bank, 
136 ; on the expunging resolution, 
141 ; opposes establishment of 
mints at the South, 144 ; also ap- 
propriating surplus for fortifica- 
tions, 146; in financial crisis of 
1S37, 200; on the sub-Treasury 
bill, 201, 205 ; on resumption, 
202, 203 ; opposes payment of 
state debts by national govern- 
ment, 221 ; prepares financial 
measures upon Tyler's accession, 
240, 244 ; construction of a presi- 
dential election, 241 ; programme 
for legislation under Tyler, 245 ; 
attempts to introduce hour-lim- 
its for speeches in Senate, 250* 



370 



INDEX. 



252 ; lectures Tyler in the Bank 
debate, 256; defeated by Polk, 
290 ; causes thereof, 310 ; attacks 
Taylor's message to Congress, 
331 ; proposes compromise of sla- 
very controversy, 331 ; defeated 
by Benton, 33G ; compared with 
Benton, 339. 

Crawford, William H. : adopts the 
" spoils system," 80. 

Crockett, David, 27, 33 ; berates 
Jackson, 113. 

Cumberland Road, Benton votes 
against bill for, 58. 

Davis, Jefferson : compared with 
Benedict Arnold, 163 ; a repudia- 
tor, 220 ; and Calhoun's resolution 
as to slavery in the territories, 
325 ; protests against admission of 
California, 338. 

Drayton, family, loyalty of the fam- 
ily in South Carolina, 96. 

Florida, the treaty securing it to the 
United States, 41. 

Foote, Senator from Mississippi, op- 
position to his public land scheme 
by Benton and Webster, 77. 

Fremont, John C. : explores Rocky 
Mountains, 283 ; Benton will not 
vote for, 354 ; Benton's interest in 
his explorations, 363. 

Giddings, Joshua R., sound policy 
of, 294. 

Harrison, Wm. Henry : election not 
affected by slavery question, 235 ; 
death and character, 237. 

Hartford Convention, criticised by 
Benton, 31, 78 ; causes of, 49. 

Houston, Samuel, 34 : wins victory 
of San Jacinto, 180 ; hates Van 
Buren, 188 ; description of, 327 ; 
votes to admit California, 338. 

Indian tribes, Benton on the re- 
moval of, 55 ; criticism on treat- 
ment of, 57, 172, 347 ; removal of 
Cherokees in 1836, 171. 

Jackson, Andrew : affray with Ben- 
ton, 28 ; befriended by Benton at 
Washington, 32 ; in presidential 
election of 1824, 29, 60 ; incensed 
against Adams and Clay, 61 ; suc- 
cess in election of 1828, 59 ; char- 
acter of, his following, 71, 74, 75; 



his opponents, 72 ; his victory 
compared with Jefferson's, 73 ; 
compared with Wellington, 73 ; 
foster-father of the " spoils sys- 
tem," 79, 82; inferior character 
of his cabinet, 86; relations of 
his followei-s with those of Clay 
and Calhoun, 86 ; struggles with 
the Bank and the nullifiers, 88 ; 
expected to support nullification, 

96 ; but does not, 97 ; repudiates 
Calhoun and adopts Van Buren, 

97 ; at the Jefferson birthday ban- 
quet, 98 ; again defiues his posi- 
tion, 99; signs new tariff bill, 99; 
reelected in 1832, 100 ; issues 
proclamation against nullification, 

101 ; special message on nulli- 
fication, 102 ; opinion on tariff, 

102 ; threatens to hang Calhoun, 
104; signs "force bill," also 
Clay's compromise bill, 108 ; be- 
haves badly in case of Georgia, 
112; attack on U. S. Bank, 114 
et seq. ; reasons of his political 
success, 116 ; opposes re-charter 
of Bank in message of 1829, 117 ; 
vetoes bill for re -charter, 127 ; re- 
elected, 130 ; removes the de- 
posits, 130 ; protests against Clay's 
resolution of censure, 133 ; con- 
tinued assaults on the Bank, 139 ; 
gives a dinner to the expungers, 
141 ; signs bill for distributing 
Treasury surplus, 153 ; issues 
Treasury order concerning pay- 
ments for public lands, 155; 
Kitchen Cabinet and " machine 
politics," 184, 185; liking for Van 
Buren, 186; his nationalism, 234 ; 
praised by Benton for hanging 
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, 272 ; 
favors annexation of Texas, 298 ; 
and Van Buren, 299. 

Jefferson, Thomas : character of his 
following, 70, 71 ; his victory com- 
pared with Jackson's, 73 ; his 
pseudo-classicism, 92 ; quoted as 
authority for nullification, 95 ; 
celebration of birthday of, 97. 

Lee, Robert E. : military standing 
of, 38. 

Lincoln, Abraham : services in anti- 
slavery cause, 159. 

Livingston, Edward : aids in prepar- 
ing proclamation against nullifi- 
cation, 101. 

Lucas, Benton's duel with, 28. 



INDEX. 



371 



Madison, James, quoted, 163. 

Marcy, Wm, L., adopts "spoils sys- 
tem," 81 ; cringes to the South, 
108. 

McDuffie, passage at arms with Ben- 
ton, 301, 305 ; deceives Benton as 
to taxes, 313. 

McLeod, Alexander, case of, 271. 

Missouri, character of its popula- 
tion, 39 ; admission to the Union, 
43, 47 ; land titles in, 45. 

Missouri Compromise bill, 43 ; not 
the beginning of the slavery and 
anti-slavery divisions in the Union, 
48; Benton concerning repeal of , 
349. 

Monroe, James, remarks, 47, 58, 59 ; 
signs bill for trading road, 53. 

New Orleans, Benton's astonishing 
description of, 93. 

Oregon, disputed between Great 
Britain and the United States, 
50 ; Benton's remarks concerning, 
51 ; comes into notice again in 
J. Q. Adams's term, G5 ; final set- 
tlement of the matter, 260-273 ; 
neglected in Ashburton treaty, 
278, and by Calhoun, 278, and 
others, 279 ; Benton's feeling 
about, 281, 284; bill for settle- 
ment of, 284 ; Calhoun on the ad- 
mission of, 326-328. 

Panama mission, disputes concern- 
ing, 63-65. 

Phillips, Wendell, estimate of, 160. 

Pierce, Franklin, assailed by Cal- 
houn, 166 ; relations with Ben- 
ton, 344, 315 ; a valuation of, 
345 ; Benton upon pro-slavery 
tendencies of, 359. 

Polk, James K., character of his 
following, 234 ; and the South- 
western boundary, 287 ; elected 
President, 290, 310 ; estimate of, 
292 ; deceives Benton as to Texas, 
313 ; displaces Blair, 317 ; rela- 
tions with various portions of 
Democratic party, 317, 318. 

Randolph, John : duel with Clay, 62. 
Bynders, Isaiah, a type, 291, 292. 

Seminoles, war with, 209-216. 

Taney, Roger B., removes the de- 
posits, 130 ; afterward made chief 



justice, 131 ; criticised by Benton 
for his opinion in Dred Scott case, 
358. 

Taylor, Zachary, elected President, 
329 ; character, 330, 337 ; message 
to Congress, 331 ; dies, 337. 

Tyler, John, opposes " Force Bill," 
105 ; estimate of, on his acces- 
sion, 237 ; his political affiliations, 
238-240; first message to Con- 
gress, 245 ; conduct concerning 
bill for establishing a bank, 254- 
257 ; his cabinet resigns, 257 ; 
identifies himself with the sep- 
aratist Democrats, 298 ; schemes 
for annexation of Texas, 300, 306 ; 
assailed by Benton, 307, 309 ; be- 
havior at time of explosion of 
gun on board the Princeton, 361. 

Van Buren, Martin, supports Craw- 
ford for Presidency in 1824, 
61 ; adopts " spoils system," 81 ; 
adopted by Jackson as his heir, 
97 ; Vice-President, 100 ; product 
of " machine politics," 184 ; be- 
friended by Jackson, 186 ; sketch 
of, and causes of his elevation, 
186-188 ; his inaugural, 1S8 ; finan- 
cial crisis and his doings therein, 
189 et seq., 194, 196, 197 ; finan- 
cial measures, 200 ; has to deal 
with the Seminoles, 209; public 
dishonesty under, 219 ; charged 
with squandering the public 
money, 230 ; significance of his 
defeat, 234 ; slavery question did 
not arise in his administration, 
235 ; champion of old-style Union 
Democrats, and opposed to an- 
nexation of Texas, 298 ; candidate 
for Presidency, 299, 310 ; and the 
Free Soil party, 329. 

War of 1812, a cause of the, 7; 
political influence on Benton, 30. 

Warsaw, social habits of the town, 
36. 

Webster, Daniel, position of, con- 
cerning Clay's first tariff bill, 
58 ; position on the tariff ques- 
tion in 1828, 67 ; in the debate 
on Foote's resolution concerning 
sales of public land, 77, 97 ; leader 
of National Republican, or Whig, 
party, 86 ; aids Jackson in nulli- 
fication troubles, 103, 104 ; ad- 
vocates the " force bill," 105 ; res- 
olute in opposition to the South, 



372 



INDEX. 



106, 107, 108; remarks as to his 
services, 111 ; befriends Bank of 
United States, 124, 126, 127, 129 ; 
personal relations with the Jack- 
sonians, 131 ; introduces bill for 
re-charter of Bank, 136; on the 
expunging resolution, 142 ; sup- 
ports establishment of mints at 
the South, 144; opposes appro- 
priating Treasury surplus for for- 
tifications, 146 ; in financial crisis 
of 1837, 200; on sub-Treasury 
scheme, 201, 205 ; opposes pay- 
ment of state debt by national 
government, 221 ; remains in Ty- 
ler's cabinet, 257 ; negotiates treaty 
with England, settling bound- 
aries between United States and 



British possessions, 260, 262, 268 ; 
criticised by Benton, 273-277, 280 ; 
neglects Oregon controversy, 278 ; 
compared with Benton on the 
slavery question, 320, 339 ; com- 
pliments Benton's knowledge, 360 ; 
on friendly terms with Benton, 
362. 

Wellington, Duke of, compared 
with Washington and Jackson, 
73. 

Wilmot Proviso, Benton's remarks 
upon, 323, 336. 

Wright, Silas, adopts " spoils sys- 
tem," 81 ; expresses the " dough 
face " sentiment at time of nulli- 
fication troubles, 107. 



9tmertcan Statesmen. 



A Series of Biographies of Men famous in the 

Political History of the United States. Edited by 

John T. Morse, Jr. Each volume, i6mo, 

gilt top, $1.25; half morocco, $2.50. 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
ALEXANDER HAMILTON. By He?iry Cabot Lodge. 
JOHN C. CALHOUN. By Dr. H Von Hoist. 
ANDREW JACKSON. By W. G. Sumner. 
JOHN RANDOLPH. By Henry Adams. 
JAMES MONROE. By D. C. Gihnan. 
THOMAS JEFFERSON. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
DANIEL WEBSTER. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 
A LBER T GA LLA TIN. By John A its tin Stevens. 
JAMES MADISON. By Sydney Howard Gay. 
JOHN ADAMS. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
JOHN MARSHALL. By Allan B. Magruder. 
SAMUEL ADAMS. By James K. Hosmer. 
THOMAS H. BENTON. By Theodore Roosevelt. 
HENRY CLA Y. By Carl Schurz. 2 vols. 
PA TRICK HENR Y. By Moses Coit Tyler. 
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. By Theodore Roosevelt. 
MARTIN VAN BUREN By Edward M. Shepard. 
GEORGE WASHINGTON. By Henry Cabot Lodge. 

2 vols. 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By John T. Morse, Jr. 
JOHN J A Y. By George Pellew. 

(I? 1 Preparation.) 
LEWIS CASS. By Andrew C. McLaughlin. 
Others to be announced hereafter. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. That Mr. Morse's con- 
J ^ elusions will in the main 

be those of posterity we have very little doubt, and he has set an 
admirable example to his coadjutors in respect of interesting 
narrative, just proportion, and judicial candor. — New York 
Evening Post. 

HAMILTON. The biography of Mr. Lodge is calm and 
dignified throughout. He has the virtue 
— rare indeed among biographers — of impartiality. He has 
done his work with conscientious care, and the biography of 
Hamilton is a book which cannot have too many readers. It is 
more than a biography ; it is a study in the science of govern- 
ment. — St. Paid Pioneer-Press. 

CALHOUN Nothing can exceed the skill with which the 
political career of the great South Carolinian 
is portrayed in these pages. The work is superior to any other 
number of the series thus far, and we do not think it can be sur« 
passed by any of those that are to come. The whole discussion 
in relation to Calhoun's position is eminently philosophical and 
just. — The Dial (Chicago). 

V/tCFTSON P r °f essor Sumner has ... all in all, made 
-' ' the justest long estimate of Jackson that has 

had itself put between the covers of a book. — New York 
Times. 

R ANIDOI PH The hook has been to me intensely inter- 
esting. . . It is rich in new facts and side 
lights, and is worthy of its place in the already brilliant series 
of monographs on American Statesmen. — Prof. M" 1 
Tyler. 

MONROE I n clearness of style, anri 

ary workmanship, c 
volume is well-nigh perfect. There - 

ment, a correctness of taste, and a iiip 

which are too frequently wanting in i id especially 

in political biographies. — American Literary Churchman (Bal- 
timore). 

JEFFERSON The hook is exceedingly interesting and 
•^ ' readable. The attention of the reader is 

strongly seized at once, and he is carried along in spite of him- 
self, sometimes protesting, sometimes doubting, yet unable to 
lay the book down. — Chicago Standard. 

WEBSTER ** w *^ k e read by students of history; it will 
be invaluable as a work of reference ; it 
will be an authority as regards matters of fact and criticism ; it 
hits the keynote of Webster's durable and ever-growing fame ; 
it is adequate, calm, impartial ; it is admirable. — Philadelphia 
Press. 



GALLATIN. ^ t * s one °^ ^ e most carefully prepared of 
these very valuable volumes, . . . abound- 
ing in information not so readily accessible as is that pertaining 
to men more often treated by the biographer. . . . The whole 
work covers a ground which the political student cannot afford 
to neglect. — Boston Correspondent Hartford Courant. 

MADJSON The execut i° n °f tne work deserves the high- 
est praise. It is very readable, in a bright 
and vigorous style, and is marked by unity and consecutiveness 
of plan. — The Nation (New York). 

YOHN ADAMS A § ood piece of literar y work. ... It 
J ' covers the ground thoroughly, and 

gives just the sort of simple and succinct account that is wanted. 
— Evening Post (New York). 

MARSHALL Well done, with simplicity, clearness, pre- 
cision, and judgment, and in a spirit of 
moderation and equity. A valuable addition to the series. — 
New York Tribune. 

SAMUEL ADAMS. Thoroughly appreciative and sym- 
pathetic, yet fair and critical. . . . 
This biography is a piece of good work — a clear and simple 
presentation of a noble man and pure patriot ; it is written in a 
spirit of candor and humanity. — Worcester Spy. 

BENTON. An mterestm g addition to our political liter- 
ature, and will be of great service if it spread 
an admiration for that austere public morality which was one of 
the marked characteristics of its chief figure. — The Epoch 
(New York). 

CLA Y. We have in this life of Henry Clay a biography of 
one of the most distinguished of American states- 
°^d a political history of the United States for the first 
.*.„ nineteenth century. In each of these important and 
ou,l undertakings, Mr. Schurzhas been eminently successful, 
'.eed, it is not too much to say that, for the period covered, 
h?ve no other book which equals or begins to equal this life 
_ . Henry Clay as an introduction to the study of American pol- 
itics. — Political Science Quarterly (New York). 

HENR Y. Professor Tyler has not only made one of the 
best and most readable of American biographies ; 
he may fairly be said to have reconstructed the life of Patrick 
Henry, and to have vindicated the memory of that great man 
from the unappreciative and injurious estimate which has been 
placed upon it. — New York Evening Post. 

MORRIS. ^ r< R 00s evelt has produced an animated and 
intensely interesting biographical volume. . . . 
Mr. Roosevelt never loses sight of the picturesque background 
of politics, war -governments, and diplomacy. — Magazine oj 
American History (New York). 



VAN B UREN. ^° more generous, appreciative, or jnst 
biography, and no more interesting Or 
philosophical piece of political history has appeared in this valu- 
able series . . . than this absorbing book. . . . To give any ad- 
equate idea of the personal interest of the book, or its intimate 
bearing on nearly the whole course of our political history would 
be equivalent to quoting the larger part of it. — Brooklyn Eagle. 

WASHINGTON ^ r ' Lodge has written an admirable 
biography, and one which cannot but 
confirm the American people in the prevailing estimate concern- 
ing the Father of his Country; but its deepest and most impor- 
tant significance appears to us to consist in its testimony to the 
exaltation and the uniqueness of a character whose like comes 
seldom to the world, and only in periods of great stress and cri- 
sis. — New York Tribune. 

FRANKLIN *^ e ^ as mana g e d to condense the whole 
mass of matter gleaned from all sources 
into his volume without losing in a single sentence the freedom 
or lightness of his style or giving his book in any part the 
crowded look of an epitome. He has plenty of time and plenty 
of room for all he wishes to say, and says it in the very best and 
most interesting manner. — The Independent (New York). 



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